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L161—O-1096 





WORKS 


OF 


ISRAEL ZANGWILL 


THE MELTING-POT 





CHOSEN PEOPLES 





THE AMERICAN JEWISH BOOK COMPANY 
NEW YORK 
1921 


THE MELTING-POT 
CoryRIGHT, 1909, 1914, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


CHOSEN PEOPLES 
‘ COPYRIGHT, I9I9Q, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Printed by 
Tue Lorp BaLtTiMoRE PREss 
Baltimore, Md. 


ae 
Se ee 
oa 


Pees 


bE 


4 


‘ 





ih: 


ALAS Wi 





TO. 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 


IN RESPECTFUL RECOGNITION OF 
HIS STRENUOUS STRUGGLE AGAINST 
THE FORCES THAT THREATEN TO 
SHIPWRECK THE GREAT REPUBLIC 
WHICH CARRIES MANKIND AND 
ITS FORTUNES, THIS PLAY IS, BY 
HIS KIND PERMISSION, CORDIALLY 
DEDICATED 


, atae nN 


ne 
t 
7 


eS 


— 





THE CAST 


[As first produced at the Columbia Theatre, Washington, on the 
fifth of October 1908] 


David Quixano 
Mendel Quixano 
Baron Revendal 
Quincy Davenport, Jr. 
Herr Pappelmeister 
Vera Revendal 
Baroness Revendal 
Frau Quixano 
Kathleen O'Reilly 
Settlement Servant 


Waker WHITESIDE 
Henry BercMan 

Joun Brair 

GRANT STEWART 

Henry VocEL 

CurysTAaL HERNE 
Leonora Von OTTINGER 
LovuisE MuLpENER 

Mo tte REVEL 

Annie Harris 


Produced by Hucu Forp 


[As first produced by the Play Actors at the Court Theatre, London, 
on the twenty-fifth of January 1914] 


David Quixano 
Mendel Quixano 
Baron Revendal 
Quincy Davenport, Jr. 
Herr Pappelmeister 
Vera Revendal 
Baroness Revendal 
Frau Quixano 
Kathleen O’Reilly 
Settlement Servant 


Haroip Cuapin 
Hucu TaBBERER 

H. Lawrence Leyton 
P. PeErcEvAL CLARK 
Cuiirtron ALDERSON 
Puy iis ReLPH 
GILLIAN SCAIFE 

Inez BENsUSAN 

E. Notan O’Connor 
Rutu Parrotr 


Produced by Norman Pacer 


1 
j , 


oa 


——. 


es 


ee 





‘Act I 


The scene 1s laid in the living-room of the small home of 
the quixanos in the Richmond or non-Fewish 
borough of New York, about five o'clock of a Feb- 
ruary afternoon. At centre back 1s a double street- 
door giving on a columned veranda in the Colonial 
style. Natled on the right-hand door-post gleams 
a Mezuzah, a tiny metal case, containing a Biblical 
passage. On the right of the door 1s a small hat- 
stand holding MENDEL’s overcoat, umbrella, ete. 
There are two windows, one on either side of the 
door, and three exits, one down-stage on the left 
leading to the stairs and family bedrooms, and two 
on the right, the upper leading to KATHLEEN’S 
bedroom and the lower to the kitchen. Over the 
street door 1s pinned the Stars-and-Siripes. On the 
left wall, in the upper corner of which 1s a music- 
stand, are bookshelves of large mouldering Hebrew 
books, and over them 1s hung a Mizrach, or Hebrew 
picture, to show 1t 15 the East Wall. Other pictures 
round the room include Wagner, Columbus, Lincoln, 
and “ ‘fews at the Wailing place.” Down-stage, 
about a yard from the left wall, stands vavip’s 
roll-desk, open and displaying a medley of music, 
a quill pen, etc. On the wall behind the desk hangs 
a book-rack with brightly bound English books. A 
grand piano stands at left centre back, holding a 
pile of music and one huge Hebrew tome. There 1s 
a table 1n the middle of the room covered with a red 
cloth and a litter of objects, music, and newspapers. 
The fireplace, in which a fire 1s burning, occupies 

A 


the centre of the right wall, and by it stands an 
armchair on which les another heavy mouldy 
Hebrew tome. The mantel holds a clock, two silver 
candlesticks, etc. A chiffonier stands against the 
back wall on the right. There are a few cheap 
chairs. The whole effect 15 a curious blend of 
shabbiness, Americanism, ‘fewishness, and music, 
all four being combined in the figure of MENDEL 
QUIXANO, who, in a black skull-cap, a seedy velvet 
jacket, ana red carpet-slippers, 15 discovered standing 
at the open street-door. He 1s an elderly music 
master with a fine Fewish face, pathetically furrowed 
by misfortunes, and a short grizzled beard. 


MENDEL 
Good-bye, Johnny! . . . And don’t forget to practise 
your scales. [Shutting door, shivers.| 
Ugh! It’ll snow again, I guess. 
[He yawns, heaves a great sigh of relief, walks toward 
the table, and perceives a mustc-roll. | 
The chump! He’s forgotten his music ! 
[He picks 1t up and runs toward the window on the 
left, muttering furiously | 
Brainless, earless, thumb-fingered Gentile ! 
[Throwing open the window] 
Here, Johnny! You can’t practise your scales if 
you leave ’em here ! 
[He throws out the music-roll and shivers again at 
the cold as he shuts the window.| 
Ugh! And I must go out to that miserable dancing 
class to scrape the rent together. 


[He goes to the fire and warms his hands.| 
2 


Ach Gott! What a life! What a life! 
[He drops dejectedly into the armchair. Finding 
himself sitting uncomfortably on the big book, he 
half rises and pushes it to the side of the seat. 
After an instant an irate Irish voice is heard from 


behind the kitchen door.| 


KATHLEEN [Without] 
Divil take the butther! I wouldn’t put up with ye, 
not for a hundred dollars a week. 


MENDEL [Razsing himself to listen, heaves great sigh] 
Ach! Mother and Kathleen again! 


KATHLEEN [Stzll louder] 
Pots and pans and plates and knives! Sure ’tis enough 
to make a saint chrazy. 


FRAU QUIXANO [Equally loudly from kitchen| 


Wos schreist du? Gott in Himmel, dieses Amertka ! 


KATHLEEN [Opening door of kitchen toward the end 
of FRAU QUIXANO’Ss speech, but turning back, with her 
hand visible on the door| 

What’s that ye’re afther jabberin’ about America? 

If ye don’t like God’s own counthry, sure ye can go 

back to your own Jerusalem, so ye can. 


MENDEL 


One’s very servants are anti-Semites. 


KATHLEEN [Bangs her door as she enters excitedly, 
carrying a folded white table-cloth. She 1s a young 
and pretty Irish matd-of-all-work | 

3 


Bad luck to me, if iver I take sarvice again with haythen 


Jews. 
[She perceives MENDEL huddled up in the armchatr, 


gives a little scream, and drops the cloth.| 
Och, I thought ye was out ! 


MENDEL [Rising] 
And so you dared to be rude to my mother. 


KATHLEEN [Angrily, as she picks up the cloth| 
She said I put mate on a butther-plate. 


MENDEL 
Well, you know that’s against her religion. 


KATHLEEN 
But I didn’t do nothing of the soort. I ounly put 
butther on a mate-plate. 


MENDEL 
That’s just as bad. What the Bible forbids—— 


KATHLEEN [Lays the cloth on a chair and vigorously 
clears off the litter of things on the table.| 

Sure, the Pope himself couldn’t remimber it all, 

Why don’t ye have a sinsible religion ? 


MENDEL 

You are impertinent. Attend to your work. 
[He seats himself at the piano.| 

4 


KATHLEEN 

And isn’t it laying the Sabbath cloth I am ? 
[She bangs down articles from the table into thet 
right places. | 


MENDEL 


Don’t answer me back. 


[He begins to play softly.| 
KATHLEEN 


Faith, | must answer somebody back—and sorra a word of 
English she understands. I might as well talk to a tree. 


MENDEL 
You are not paid to talk, but to work. 


[Playing on softly.] 
KATHLEEN 


And who can work wid an ould woman nagglin’ and 
grizzlin’ and faultin’ me ? 

[She removes the red table-cloth.| 
Mate-plates, butther-plates, kosher, trepha, sure I’ve 
smashed up folks’ crockery and they makin’ less fuss 
ouver It. 


MENDEL [Stops playing. | 

Breaking crockery is one thing, and breaking a religion 
another. Didn’t you tell me when I engaged you 
that you had lived in other Jewish families ? 


KATHLEEN [Azgrily] 
And is it a liar ye’d make me out now? I’ve lived 
5 


wid clothiers and pawnbrokers and Vaudeville actors, 
but I niver shtruck a house where mate and butther 
couldn’t be as paceable on the same plate as eggs 
and bacon—the most was that some wouldn’t ate the 
bacon onless ’twas killed kosher. 


MENDEL [Tickled] 
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! 


KATHLEEN [Furious, pauses with the white table- 
cloth half on| 

And who’s ye laughin’ at? I give ye a week’s notice. 

I won’t be the joke of Jews, no, begorra, that I won’t. 


[She pulls the cloth on viciously. | 


MENDEL [Sobered, rising from the piano] 

Don’t talk nonsense, Kathleen. Nobody is making 
a joke of you. Have a little patience—you’ll soon 
learn our ways. 


KATHLEEN [More mildly] 

Whose ways, yours or the ould lady’s or Mr. David’s ? 
To-night being yer Sabbath, youll be blowing out 
yer bedroom candle, though ye won’t light it; Mr. 
David’ll light his and blow it out too; and the mis- 
thress won’t even touch the candleshtick. ‘There’s 
three religions in this house, not wan. 


MENDEL [Coughs uneasily. | 

Hem! Well, you learn the mistress’s ways—that 
will be enough. | 

6 


KATHLEEN [Going to mantelpiece | 
But what way can I understand her jabberin’ and 
jibberin’ ?—I’m not a monkey ! 
[She takes up a silver candlestick. | 
Why doesn’t she talk English like a Christian ? 


MENDEL [Irritated] 
If you are going on like that, perhaps you had better 
not remain here. 


KATHLEEN [Blazing up, forgetting to take the second 
candlestick | , 

And who’s axin’ ye to remain here? Faith, Pll quit 

off this blissid minit ! 


MENDEL [Taken aback| 
No, you can’t do that. 


KATHLEEN 

And why can’t I? Ye can keep yer dirthy wages. 
[She dumps down the candlestick violently on the 
table, and exit hysterically into her bedroom.| 


MENDEL [Szghing heavily| 

She might have put on the other candlestick. 
[He goes to mantel and takes 1t. A rat-tat-tat ar 
street-door. | 

Who can that be? 
[Running to KATHLEEN’S door, holding candlestick 
forgetfully low. | 

Kathleen! ‘There’s a visitor ! 

7 


KATHLEEN [Angrily from within] 
I’m not here ! 


MENDEL 
So long as you’re in this house, you must do your 
work. 

[KATHLEEN’s head emerges sulktly.| 


KATHLEEN 
I tould ye I was lavin’ at wanst. Let you open the 
door yerself. 


MENDEL 

I’m not dressed to receive visitors—it may be a new 

pupil. 
[He goes toward staircase, datamaiiee carrying 
off the candlestick which KATHLEEN has not caught 
sight of. Exit on the left.| 


KATHLEEN [Moving toward the street-door]| 

The divil fly away wid me if ivir from this our I set 

foot again among haythen furriners 
[She throws open the door angrily and then the 
outer door. VERA REVENDAL, @ beautiful girl in 
furs and muff, with a touch of the exotic im her 
appearance, steps into the little vestibule. | 





VERA 
Is Mr. Quixano at home? 


KATHLEEN [Sulkily] 
Which Mr. Quixano ? 
8 


VERA [Surprised] 


Are there two Mr. Quixanos ? 


KATHLEEN [Tariély] 
Didn’t I say there was ? 


VERA 
Then I want the one who plays. 


KATHLEEN 


There isn’t a one who plays. 


VERA 
Oh, surely ! 


KATHLEEN 
Ye’re wrong entirely. They both plays. 


VERA [Smiling] 
Oh, dear! And I suppose they both play the violin. 


KATHLEEN | 
Ye’re wrong again. One plays the piano—ounly the 
young ginthleman plays the fiddle—Mr. David ! 


VERA [Eagerly | 
Ah, Mr. David—that’s the one I want to see. 


KATHLEEN 
He’s out. 


[She abruptly shuts the door.| 


VERA [Stopping its closing] 
Don’t shut the door ! 


KATHLEEN [Suappily] 


More chanst of seeing him out there than in here ! 


VERA 


But I want to leave a message. 


KATHLEEN 
Then why don’t ye come inside? It’s freezin’? me 
to the bone. 
[She sneezes. | 
Atchoo ! 


VERA 
I’m sorry. 

[She comes 1n and closes the door.| 
Will you please say Miss Revendal called from the 
Settlement, and we are anxiously awaiting his answer 
to the letter asking him to play for us on 





KATHLEEN 
What way will I be tellin’ him all that? I’m not 
here. 


VERA 
Eh ? 


KATHLEEN 


I’m lavin’—just as soon as I’ve me thrunk packed. 
fe) 


VERA 
Then I must write the message—can I write at this 
desk ? 


KATHLEEN 


If the ould woman don’t come in and shpy you. 


VERA 
What old woman ? 


KATHLEEN | 
Ould Mr. Quixano’s mother—she wears a black wig, 
she’s that houly. 


VERA [Bewildered] 
What? ... But why should she mind my writing? 


KATHLEEN 
Look at the clock. 

[vera looks at the clock, more puzzled than ever.| 
If ye’re not quick, it'll be Shabbos. 


VERA 
Be what ? 


KATHLEEN [Holds up hands of horror| 
Ye don’t know what Shabbos is! A Jewess not know 
her own Sunday ! 


VERA [Outraged] 


I, a Jewess! How dare you? 
II 


KATHLEEN [Flustered] 
Axin’ your pardon, miss, but ye looked a bit furrin 
and I 





VERA [Frozen] 
I am a Russian. 
[Slowly and dazedly| 
Do I understand that Mr. Quixano is a Jew? 


KATHLEEN 
Two Jews, miss. Both of ’em. 


VERA 
Oh, but it is impossible. 
[Dazedly to herself | 
He had such charming manners. 
[Aloud again] 
You seem to think everybody Jewish. Are yousure Mr. 
Quixano is not Spanish f—the name sounds Spanish. 


KATHLEEN 
Shpanish ! 
[She picks up the old Hebrew book on the armchair. | 
Look at the ould lady’s book. Is that Shpanish ? 
[She points to the Mizrach.| 
And that houly picture the ould lady says her pater- 
noster to! Isthat Shpanish ? And that houly table- 
cloth with the houly silver candle 
[Cry of sudden astonishment| 
Why, I’ve ounly put 
[She looks toward mantel and utters a great cry of 
alarm as she drops the Hebrew book on the floor.| 








12 


Why, where’s the other candleshtick! Mother in 

hivin, they'll say I shtole the candleshtick ! 
[Percerving that vrRa 1s dazedly moving toward 
door| 

Beggin’ your pardon, miss 
[She 15 about to move a chair toward the desk.]| 





VERA 
Thank you, I’ve changed my mind. . 


KATHLEEN 
That’s more than I’ll do. 


VERA [Hand on door] 
Don’t say I called at all. 


KATHLEEN 

Plaze yerself. What name did ye say ? 
[Mernvet enters hastily from his bedroom, completely 
transmogrified, minus the skull-cap, with a Prince 
Albert coat, and boots instead of slippers, so that hts 
appearance 1s gentlemanly. KATHLEEN begins to 
search quietly and unostentatiously in the table- 
drawers, the chiffonier, etc., etc., for the candlestick. 


MENDEL 
I am sorry if I have kept you waiting—— 
(He rubs his hands 1mportantly.] 
You see I have so many pupils already. Won’t you 
sit down ? 
[He indicates a chair.| 
13 


VERA [Flushing, embarrassed, releasing her hold of the 
door handle | 

Thank you—I—I—I didn’t come about pianoforte 

lessons. 


MENDEL [Sighing in disappointment] 
Ach! 


VERA 
In fact I—er—it wasn’t you I wanted at all—I was 
just going. 


MENDEL [Politely] 
Perhaps I can direct you to the house you are looking 
for. 


VERA 
Thank you, I won’t trouble you. 
[She turns toward the door again.| 


MENDEL 
Allow me ! 


[He opens the door for her.| 


VERA [Hesitating, struck by his manners, struggling 
with her anti-Fewish prejudice] 
It—it—was your son I wanted. 


MENDEL [Ais face lighting “p) 
You mean my nephew, David. Yes, he gives violin 
lessons. 
[He closes the door. | 
14 


VERA 
Oh, is he your nephew ? 


MENDEL 

I am sorry he is out—he, too, has so many pupils, 
though at the moment he is only at the Crippled 
Children’s Home—playing to them. 


VERA | 
How lovely of him ! 

[Touched and deciding to conquer her prejudice| 
But that’s just what J came about—I mean we’d like 
him to play again at our Settlement. Please ask him 
why he hasn’t answered Miss Andrews’s letter. 


MENDEL [Astonished] 


He hasn’t answered your letter ? 


VERA 


Oh, I’m not Miss Andrews ; I’m only her assistant. 


MENDEL 

I see—Kathleen, whatever are you doing under the 

table ? 
[KATHLEEN, in her hunting around for the candle- 
stick, 1s now stooping and lifting up the table- 
cloth. | 


KATHLEEN 

Sure the fiend’s after witching away the candle- 
shtick. 

15 


MENDEL [Embarrassed] 
The candlestick ? Oh—I—I think you'll find it in 


my bedroom. 


KATHLEEN 
Wisha, now! 
[She goes into his bedroom. 


MENDEL [Turning apologetically to vera] 
I beg your pardon, Miss Andrews, I mean Miss—er—— 


VERA 
Revendal. 


MENDEL [Slightly more interested] 
Revendal ? Then you must be the Miss Revendal 
David told me about ! 


VERA [Blushing] 
Why, he has only seen me once—the time he played 
at our Roof-Garden Concert. 


MENDEL 
Yes, but he was so impressed by the way you handled 
those new immigrants—the Spirit of the Settlement, 


he called you. 


VERA [Modestly] 
Ah, no—Miss Andrews is that. And you will tell 
him to answer her letter at once, won’t you, because 
there’s only a week now to our Concert. 

[A gust of wind shakes the windows. She smiles.] 
aa it will mot be on the Roof Garden. 
I 


MENDEL [Half to himself] 
Fancy David not saying a word about it tome! Are 
you sure the letter was mailed ? 


VERA | 

I mailed it myself—a week ago. And even in New 

York 
[She smiles. Re-enter KATHLEEN with the recovered 
candlestick. | 


KATHLEEN 

Bedad, ye’re as great a shleep-walker as Mr. David! 
[She places the candlestick on the table and moves 
toward her bedroom. | 


MENDEL 
Kathleen ! 





KATHLEEN [Pursuing her walk without turning] 


I’m not here ! 


MENDEL 

Did you take ina letter for Mr. David about a week ago? 
[Smiling at Miss REVENDAL| 

He doesn’t get many, you see. 


KATHLEEN [Turning] 
A letter? Sure, I took in ounly a postcard from 
Miss Johnson, an’ that ounly sayin’ 


VERA 
And you don’t remember a letter—a large letter— 


last Saturday—with the seal of our Settlement ? 
ioey B 





KATHLEEN 
Last Saturday wid a seal, is it? Sure, how could 1] 
forgit it? 


MENDEL 
Then you did take it in? 


KATHLEEN 
Ye’re wrong entirely. ”“I'was the misthress took 
it in. 


MENDEL [To vera] 
I am sorry the boy has been so rude. 


KATHLEEN 
But the misthress didn’t give it him at wanst—she 
hid it away bekaz it was Shabbos. 


MENDEL 
Oh, dear—and she has forgotten to give it to him. 
Excuse me 

[He makes a hurried exit to the kitchen.| 


KATHLEEN 
And excuse me—lI’ve me thrunk to pack. 
[She goes toward her bedroom, pauses at the door.| 
And ye’ll witness I don’t pack the candleshtick. 
[Emphatic exit.] 


VERA [Still dazed] 
A Jew! That wonderful boy a Jew! ... But then 
18 


so was David the shepherd youth with his harp and 
his psalms, the sweet singer in Israel. 
ts She surveys the room and its contents with interest. 
The windows rattle once or twice in the rising wind. 
The light gets gradually less. She picks up the 
huge Hebrew tome on the piano and puts 1t down with 
a slight smile as tf overwhelmed by the weight of 
alien antiquity. Then she goes over to the desk 
and picks up the printed music.| 
Mendelssohn’s Concerto, Tartini’s Sondta in G Minor, 
Bach’s Chaconne... 
[She looks up at the book-rack. | 
*“‘ History of the American Commonwealth, nie eye 
clopedia of History,” “ History of the Jews ”—he 
seems very fond of history. Ah, there’s Seales and 
‘Tennyson. 
[With surprise| 
Nietzsche next to the Bible? No Russian books 
apparently 
[Re-enter MENDEL triumphantly with a large sealed 
letter. | 





MENDEL 
Here it is! As it came on Saturday, a mother 
was afraid David would open it ! 


VERA [Smiling] 
But what can you do with a letter except open it? 
Any more than with an oyster ? 


MENDEL [Smiling as he puts the letter on Daviv’s 
desk | 
9 


To a pious Jew letters and oysters are alike forbidden— 
at least letters may not be opened on our day of rest. 


VERA 

I’m sure I couldn’t rest till ’d opened mine. 
[Enter from the kitchen FRAU QUIXANO, defending 
herself with excited gesticulation. She 1s an old 
lady with a black wig, but her appearance 15 digni- 
fied, venerable even, in no way comic. She speaks 
Yiddish exclusively, that being largely the language 
of the Russian Pale. | 


FRAU QUIXANO 
Obber ich hob gesogt zu Kathleen 





MENDEL [Turning and going to her| 
Yes, yes, mother, that’s all right now. 


FRAU QUIXANO [In horror, perceiving her Hebrew 


book on the floor, where KATHLEEN has dropped 1t| 
Mein Buch ! 


[She picks it up and kisses it prously. | 


MENDEL [Presses her into her fireside chair] 
Rubig, rubig, Mutter / 
[To vera] 
She understands barely a word of English—she won’t 
disturb us. 


VERA 
Oh, but I must be going—I was so long finding the 
house, and look! it has begun to snow! 

[They both turn their heads and look at the falling snow. | 


20 


MENDEL 
All the more reason to wait for David—it may leave 
off. He can’t be long now. Do sit down. 


[He offers a chair. | 


FRAU QUIXANO [Looking round suspiciously ] 
Wos will die Shikseh ? 


VERA | 
What does your mother say ? 
& 


MENDEL [Half-smiling| 
Oh, only asking what your heathen ladyship desires. 


VERA 
Tell her I hope she is well. 


MENDEL 
Das Fraulein hofft dass es geht gut 





FRAU QUIXANO [Shrugging her shoulders in despatr- 
ing astonishment | 
Gut? Uw wie soll es gut gehen—in Amertka ! 
[She takes out her spectacles, and begins slowly 
polishing and adjusting them.| | 


VERA [Smiling] 
I understood that last word. 


MENDEL 


She asks how can anything possibly go well in 
America ! 
21 


VERA 
Ah, she doesn’t like America. 


MENDEL [Half-smiling] 
Her favourite exclamation is “ 4 Klog zu Columbes- 
SOA 


VERA 
What does that mean ? 


MENDEL 
Cursed be Columbus ! 


VERA [Laughingly] 


Poor Columbus! I suppose she’s just come over. 


MENDEL 


Oh, no, it must be ten years since I sent for her. 


VERA 
Really! But your nephew was born here ? 


MENDEL 
No, he’s Russian too. But please sit down, you had 
better get his answer at once. 

[VERA szts. | 3 


VERA 


I suppose you taught him music. 


MENDEL 


I? I can’t play the violin. He is self-taught. In 
22 


the Russian Pale he was a wonder-child. Poor David! 
He always looked forward to coming to America; he 
imagined I was a famous musician over here. He 
found me conductor in a cheap theatre—a converted 


beer-hall. 


VERA 

Was he very disappointed ? 

MENDEL | 

Disappointed ? He was enchanted! He is crazy 


about America. 


VERA [Smiling] 


Ah, 4e doesn’t curse Columbus. 


MENDEL 
My mother came with her life behind her: David 
with his life before him. Poor boy! 


VERA 
Why do you say poor boy ? 


MENDEL 

What is there before him here but a terrible struggle 

for life? If he doesn’t curse Columbus, he’ll curse 

fate. Music-lessons and dance-halls, beer-halls and 

weddings—every hope and ambition will be ground 

out of him, and he will die obscure and unknown. 
[His head sinks on his breast. FRAU QUIXANO 15 
heard faintly sobbing over her book. The sobbing 
continues throughout the scene. | 

23 


VERA [Half rising] 
You have made your mother cry. 
MENDEL 


Oh, no—she understood nothing. She always cries 
on the eve of the Sabbath. 


VERA [Mystified, Re back into her chair] 
Always cries? Why? 


MENDEL [Embarrassed] 
Oh, well, a Christian wouldn’t understand 


VERA 
Yes I could—do tell me! 


MENDEL 

She knows that in this great grinding America, David 
and I must go out to earn our bread on Sabbath as 
on week-days. She never says a word to us, but her 
heart is full of tears. 


VERA 
Poor old woman. It was wrong of us to ask your 
nephew to play at the Settlement for nothing. 


MENDEL [Rising fiercely] 
If you offer him a fee, he shall not play. Did you 
think I was begging of you ? 


VERA 

I beg your pardon 
[She smiles. ] 

There, J am begging of you. Sit down, please. 

24 








MENDEL [Walking away to piano] 
I ought not to have burdened you with our troubles 
—you are too young. 


VERA [Pathetically] 
I young? If you only knew how old I am! 


MENDEL 
Your 


VERA : 


. Lleft my youth in Russia—eternities ago. 


MENDEL 
You know our Russia ! 
[He goes over to her and sits down. | 


VERA 
Can’t you see I’m a Russian, too? 
[With a faint tremulous smile] 
I might even have been a Siberian had I stayed. But 
I escaped from my gaolers. 


MENDEL 


You were a Revolutionist ! 


VERA 
Who can live in Russia and not be? So you see 
trouble and I are not such strangers. 


MENDEL 
Who would have thought it to look at you? Siberia, 
gaolers, revolutions ! 
[ Rising | 
What terrible things life holds ! 
25 


VERA 
Yes, even in free America. 
[FRAU QuIxANO’s sobbing grows slightly louder.| 


MENDEL 
That Settlement work must be full of tragedies. 


VERA 

Sometimes one sees nothing but the tragedy of things. 
[Looking toward the window| 

The snow is getting thicker. How pitilessly it falls— 

like fate. 


MENDEL [Following her gaze] 

Yes, icy and inexorable. 
[The faint sobbing of FRAU QUIXANO over her book, 
which has been heard throughout the scene as a sort 
of musical accompaniment, has combined to work it 
up to a mood of intense sadness, intensified by the 
growing dusk, so that as the two now gaze at the 
falling snow, the atmosphere seems overbrooded with 
melancholy. There 1s a moment or two without 
dialogue, given over to the sobbing of FRAU QUIXANO, 
the roar of the wind shaking the windows, the quick 
falling of the snow. Suddenly a happy voice singing 
“ My Country ’tis of Thee” 1s heard from without. ] 


FRAU QUIXANO [Pricking up her ears, joyously] 
Do 1st Dovidel ! 


MENDEL 
That’s David ! 


[He springs up.| 
26 


VERA [Murmurs in relief | 

Ah ! 
[The whole atmosphere is changed to one of joyous 
expectation. DAVID 15 seen and heard passing the 
left window, still singing the national hymn, but tt 
breaks off abruptly as he throws open the door and 
appears on the threshold, a buoyant snow-covered 
figure in a cloak and a broad-brimmed hat, carrying 
a violin case. He 15 a sunny, handsome ‘youth of 
the finest Russo-fewish type. He speaks with a 
slight German accent. | 


DAVID 

Isn’t it a beautiful world, uncle? 
[He closes the inner door. | 

Snow, the divine white snow 
[Perceiving the visitor with amaze] 

Miss Revendal here ! 
[He removes his hat and looks at her with boyish 
reverence and wonder. | 





VERA [Smiling] 
Don’t look so surprised—I haven’t fallen from heaven 
like the snow. ‘Take off your wet things. 


DAVID 

Oh, it’s nothing ; it’s dry snow. 
[He lays down his violin case and brushes off the snow 
from his cloak, which MENDEL takes from him and hangs 
on the rack, all without interrupting the dialogue. | 

If I had only known you were waiting—— 

27 


VERA 
I am glad you didn’t—I wouldn’t have had those © 
poor little cripples cheated out of a moment of your 
music. 


DAVID 

Uncle has told you? Ah,it was bully! Youshould 

have seen the cripples waltzing with their crutches ! 
[He has moved toward the old woman, and while 
he holds one hand to the blaze now pats her cheek 
with the other in greeting, to which she responds 
with a loving smile ere she settles contentedly to 
slumber over her book. | 

Es war grossartig, Granny. Even the paralysed danced. 


MENDEL 
Don’t exaggerate, David. 


DAVID 

Exaggerate, uncle! Why, if they hadn’t the use of 
their legs, their arms danced on the counterpane ; 
if their arms couldn’t dance, their hands danced 
from the wrist ; and if their hands couldn’t dance, 
they danced with their fingers; and if their fingers 
couldn’t dance, their heads danced; and if their 
heads were paralysed, why, their eyes danced—God 
never curses so utterly but you’ve something left to 
dance with ! 

[He moves toward his desk. | 


VERA [Jnfected with his gatety| 
You'll tell us next the beds danced. 
28 


i 
if 


DAVID 
So they did—they shook their legs like mad ! 


VERA 
Oh, why wasn’t I there ? 
[His eyes meet hers at the thought of her presence.| 


DAVID 
Dear little cripples, I felt as if I could play them all 
straight again with the love and joy jumping out of 
this old fiddle. 

[He lays his hand caressingly on the violin.] 


MENDEL [Gloomily] 


But in reality you left them as crooked as ever. 


DAVID 
No, I didn’t. 
[He caresses the back of his uncle’s head in affec- 
tionate rebuke. | 
I couldn’t play their bones straight, but I played their 
brains straight. And hunch-brains are worse than 
hunch-backs. . . . 
[Suddenly perceiving his letter on the desk| 
A letter for me / 
[He takes it with boyish eagerness, then hesitates 
to open 1t. | 


VERA [Smiling] 
Oh, you may open it! 


DAVID [W cKiee 


May I? 
29 


VERA [Smiling] 
Yes, and quick—or it’ll be Shabbos ! 


[pavip looks up at her in wonder. | 


MENDEL [Smiling] 


You read your letter ! 


DAVID [Opens it eagerly, then smiles broadly with 
pleasure. | 
Oh, Miss Revendal! Isn’t that great! To play 


again at your Settlement. I am getting famous. 


VERA 


But we can’t offer you a fee. 


MENDEL [Quickly sotto voce to vERA] 
Thank you! 


DAVID 

A fee! Id pay a fee to see all those happy immigrants 
you gather together—Dutchmen and Greeks, Poles 
and Norwegians, Welsh and Armenians. If you only 


had Jews,it would be as good as going to Ellis Island. 


VERA [Smiling] 
What a strange taste! Who on earth wants to go to 
Ellis Island ? 


DAVID 

Oh, I love going to Ellis Island to watch the ships 
coming in from Europe, and to think that all those 
weary, sea-tossed wanderers are feeling what J felt 
30 


when America first stretched out her great mother- 
hand to me / 


VERA [Softly] 
Were you very happy ? 


DAVID 

It was heaven. You must remember that all my life 
I had heard of America—everybody in our town had 
friends there or was going there or got money orders 
from there. ‘The earliest game I played at was selling 
off my toy furniture and setting up in America. All 
my life America was waiting, beckoning, shining—the 
place where God would wipe away tears from off all 
faces. 


[He ends in a half-sob.| 
MENDEL [Rises, as in terror| 


Now, now, David, don’t get excited. 


[Approaches him.| 


DAVID 
To think that the same great torch of liberty which 
threw its light across all the broad seas and lands 
into my little garret in Russia, is shining also for 
all those other weeping millions of Europe, shining 
wherever men hunger and are oppressed 





MENDEL [Soozhingly | 
Yes, yes, David. 

[Laying hand on his shoulder| 
Now sit down and 
31 





DAVID [Unbeeding| 

Shining over the starving villages of Italy and Ireland, 
over the swarming stony cities of Poland and Galicia, 
over the ruined farms of Roumania, over the shambles 
of Russia 





MENDEL [Pleadingly| 
David ! 


DAVID 
Oh, Miss Revendal, when I look at our Statue of 
Liberty, i just seem to hear the voice of America 
crying: ‘‘ Come unto me all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden and I will give you rest—trest uh 

[He 15 now almost sobbing. | 





MENDEL 
Don’t talk any more—you know it is bad for you. 


DAVID 
But Miss Revendal asked—and I want to explain to 
her what America means to me. 


MENDEL 


You can explain it in your American symphony. 


VERA [Eagerly—to pavip] 


You compose ? 


DAVID [Embarrassed | 

Oh, uncle, why did you talk of—? Uncle always— 
my music is so thin and tinkling. When I am writing 
32 


my American symphony, it seems like thunder crashing 
through a forest full of bird songs. But next day— 
oh, next day ! 


[He laughs dolefully and turns away.| 
VERA 


So your music finds inspiration in America? 


DAVID 
Yes—in the seething of the Crucible. 


VERA 
The Crucible? I don’t understand ! 


DAVID 
Not understand! You, the Spirit of the Settlement ! 
[He rises and crosses to her and leans over the table, 
facing her.| 
Not understand that America is God’s Crucible, the 
great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are 
melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, 
think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you 
stand 
[Graphically illustrating it on the table] 
in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and 
histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. 
But you won’t be long like that, brothers, for these 
are the fires of God you’ve come to—these are the 
fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas ! 
Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, 
Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! 
God is making the American. 
33 , 


MENDEL 
I should have thought the American was made already 


—eighty millions of him. 


DAVID 
Eighty millions ! 

[He smiles toward vERA in good-humoured derision. | 
Eighty millions! Over a continent! Why, that 
cockleshell of a Britain has forty millions! No, uncle, 
the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in 
the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all 
races, perhaps the coming superman. Ah, what a 
glorious Finale for my symphony—if I can only 
Write 10. 


VERA 
But you have written some of it already! May I 


not see it? 


DAVID [Relapsing into boyish shyness| 

No, if you please, don’t ask 
[He moves over to his desk amd nervously shuts tt 
down and turns the keys of drawers as though 
protecting bis MS.| 


VERA 
Won’t you give a bit of it at our Concert ? 


DAVID 


Oh, it needs an orchestra. 





VERA 
But you at the violin and I at the piano 


34 





MENDEL 
You didn’t tell me you played, Miss Revendal ! 


VERA 
I told you less commonplace things. 


DAVID 
Miss Revendal plays quite like a professional. 


VERA [Smiling] 
I don’t feel so complimented as you expect. You see 
I did have a professional training. 


MENDEL [Smiling] 
And I thought you came to me for lessons ! 
[pavip laughs. | 


VERA [Smiling] 
No, I went to Petersburg 


DAVID [Dazed] 
To Petersburg 








VERA [Smiling] 
Naturally. To the Conservatoire. There wasn’t 
much music to be had at Kishineff, a town where 





DAVID 
Kishineff ! 
[He begins to tremble. | 


VERA [Still smiling | 
My birthplace. 
35 


MENDEL [Coming toward him, protectingly| 
Calm yourself, David. 


DAVID 
Yes, yes—so you are a Russian ! 
[He shudders violently, staggers. | 


VERA [ Alarmed | 


You are ill! 

DAVID | 
It is nothing, I—not much music at Kishineff! No, 
only the Death-March! ... Mother! Father! 


Ah—cowards, murderers! And you! 
[He shakes bis fist at the atr.| 
You, looking on with your cold butcher’s face! O 
God! OGod! 
[He bursts into hysterical sobs and runs, shame- 
facedly, through the door to his room. | 


VERA [Wildly] 
What have I said? What have I done? 


MENDEL 
Oh, I was afraid of this, I was afraid of this. 


FRAU QUIXANO [Who has fallen asleep over her 
book, wakes as if with a sense of the horror and 
gazes dazedly around, adding to the thrillingness 
of the moment | 


Dovidel! Wu is? Dovidel! Mir dacht sach 
36 





MENDEL [Pressing her back to her slumbers| 
Du traumst, Mutter! Schlaf ! 
[She sinks back to sleep. | 


VERA [Jn hoarse whisper] 


His father and mother were massacred ? 


MENDEL [J same tense tone| 

Before his eyes—father, mother, sisters, down to the 
youngest’ babe, whose skull was battered in by a 
hooligan’s heel. 


VERA 
How did he escape ? 


MENDEL 

He was shot in the shoulder, and fell unconscious. 
As he wasn’t a girl, the hooligans left him for dead 
and hurried to fresh sport. 


VERA 
Terrible! Terrible! 
| Almost in tears. | 


MENDEL [Shrugging shoulders, hopelessly] 
It is only Jewish history! . . . David belongs to the 
species of pogrom orphan—they arrive in the States 


by almost every ship. 
VERA 
Poor boy! Poor boy! And he looked so happy! 


[She half sobs. | 
37 


MENDEL 

So he is, most of the time—a sunbeam took human 
shape when he was born. But naturally that dreadful 
scene left a scar on his brain, as the bullet left a scar 
on his shoulder, and he is always liable to see red 
when Kishineff is mentioned. 


VERA 
I will never mention my miserable birthplace to him 
again. 


MENDEL 

But you see every few months the newspapers tell 
us of another pogrom, and then he screams out against 
what he calls that butcher’s face, so that I tremble for 
his reason. I tremble even when I see him writing 
that crazy music about America, for it only means 
he is brooding over the difference between America 
and Russia. 


VERA 
But perhaps—perhaps—all the terrible memory will 
pass peacefully away in his music. 


MENDEL 

There will always be the scar on his shoulder to 
remind him—whenever the wound twinges, it brings 
up these terrible faces and visions. 


VERA 
Is it on his right shoulder ? 
38 


MENDEL 


No—on his left. For a violinist that is even worse. 


VERA 

Ah, of course—the weight and the fingering. 
[Subconsciously placing and fingering an imaginary 
violin. | 


MENDEL 

That is why I fear so for his future—he will never be 
strong enough for the feats of bravura that the public 
demands. 


VERA 
The wild beasts! I feel more ashamed of my country 
than ever. But there’s his symphony. 


MENDEL 

And who will look at that amateurish stuff? He 
knows so little of harmony and counterpoint—he 
breaks all the rules. I’ve tried to give him a few 
pointers—but he ought to have gone to Germany. 


VERA 
Perhaps it’s not too late. 


MENDEL [Passionately] 
Ah, if you and your friends could help him! See— 
I’m begging after all. But it’s not for myself. 


VERA 
My father loves music. Perhaps he—but no! he 
39 


lives in Kishineff. But I will think—there are people 
here—I will write to you. 


MENDEL [Fervently]| 
Thank you! Thank you! 


VERA 
Now you must go to him. Good-bye. Tell him 
I count upon him for the Concert. ! 


MENDEL 
How good you are! 
[He follows her to the street-door.| 


VERA [4t door| 
Say good-bye for me to your mother—she seems 
asleep. 


MENDEL [Opening outer door] 


I am sorry it 1s snowing so. 


VERA 
We Russians are used to it. 
[Smiling, at exit] 
Good-bye—let us hope your David will turn out a 
Rubinstein. 


MENDEL [Closing the doors softly] 
I never thought a Russian Christian could be so 
human. 


[He looks at the clock. | 
40 


Gott in Himmel—my dancing class ! 
[He hurries into the overcoat hanging on the hat- 
rack. Re-enter vavib, having composed himself, 
but still somewhat dazed. | 


DAVID 
She is gone? Oh, but I have driven her away by my 


craziness- Is she very angry? 


MENDEL 
Quite the contrary—she expects you at the Concert, 
and what is more 





DAVID [Eestazically | 
And she understood! She understood my Crucible 
of God! Oh, uncle, you don’t know what it means 
to me to have somebody who understands me. Even 
you have never understood 





MENDEL [Wounded i 
Nonsense! How can Miss Revendal understand you 
better than your own uncle ? 


DAVID [Mystically exalted] 


I can’t explain—I feel it. 


MENDEL 

Of course she’s interested in your music, thank Heaven. 
But what true understanding can there be between a 
Russian Jew and a Russian Christian ? 

4t 


DAVID 
What understanding ? Aren’t we both Americans ? 


MENDEL 


Well, I haven’t time to discuss it now. 
[He winds his muffler round his throat.] 


DAVID 
Why, where are you going? 


MENDEL [Ironically] 
Where should I be going—in the snow—on the eve of 
the Sabbath? Suppose we say to synagogue ! 


DAVID 
Oh, uncle—how you always seem to hanker after 
those old things ! 


MENDEL [Tarily] 
Nonsense ! 
[He takes his umbrella from the stand.| 
I don’t like to see our people going to pieces, that’s all. 


DAVID 
Then why did you come to America? Why didn’t 
you work for a Jewish land? Yow’re not even a 
Zionist. 


MENDEL 

I can’t argue now. ‘There’s a pack of giggling school- 
girls waiting to waltz. 

42 


DAVID 
The fresh romping young things! Think of their 
happiness! I should love to play for them. 


MENDEL [Sarcastically] 
I can see you are yourself again. 
[He opens the street-door—turns back.| 
What about your own lesson? Can’t we go to- 
gether ? 


DAVID 

I must first write down what is singing in my soul— 
oh, uncle, it seems as if I knew suddenly what was 
wanting in my music ! 


MENDEL [Drily] 

Well, don’t forget what is wanting in the house! The 

rent isn’t paid yet. 
[Exit through street-door. As he goes out, he touches 
and kisses the Mezuzah on the door-post, with 
a subconsciously antagonistic revival of religious 
impulse. DAvID opens his desk, takes out a pile of 
musical manuscript, sprawls over his chair and, 
humming to himself, scribbles feverishly with the 
quill. After a few moments FRAU QUIXANO yawns, 


wakes, and stretches herself. Then she looks at 
the clock.| 


FRAU QUIXANO 
Shabbos ! 

[She rises and goes to the table and sees there are 
43 


no candles, walks to the chiffonier and gets them 
and places them in the candlesticks, then lights 
the candles, muttering a ceremonial Hebrew bene- 
diction. | 
Boruch atto haddoshem elloheinu melech hoélam assher 
kiddishonu bemitzvdsov vettzivonu lehadlik neir shel 
shabbos. 
[She pulls down the blinds of the two windows, then 
she goes to the rapt composer and touches him, 
remindingly, on the shoulder. He does not move, 
but continues writing. | 
Dovidel ! 
[He looks up dazedly. She points to the candles.| 
Shabbos ! 
[4 sweet smile comes over his face, he throws the 
quill restgnedly away and submits his head to ber 
hands and her muttered Hebrew blessing. | 
Yesimcho elohim ke-efrayim vechimnasseh—yevorechecho 
haddoshem veytshmerecho, yoer hadoshem ponov eilecho 
vechunecho, yisso hadoshem ponov eilecho veyosem lecho 
sholom. 
[Then she goes toward the kitchen. As she turns 
at the door, he is again writing. She shakes her 
finger at him, repeating| 
Gut Shabbos ! 


DAVID 

Gut Shabbos f 
[Puts down the pen and smiles after her till the door 
closes, then with a deep sigh takes his cape from the 
peg and his violin-case, pauses, still humming, to 
take up his pen and write down a fresh phrase, 

44 


finally puts on his hat and 1s just about to open 
the street-door when KATHLEEN enters from her 
bedroom fully dressed to go, and laden with a large 
brown paper parcel and an umbrella. He turns 
at the sound of her footsteps and remains at the 
door, holding his wiolin-case during the ensuing 
dialogue. | 


DAVID 
You’re not going out this bitter weather ? 


KATHLEEN [Sharply Sending him off with her 
umbrella | 
And who’s to shtay me? 


DAVID 
Oh, but you mustn’t—J’ll do your errand—what 
is it? 


KATHLEEN [Jndignantly] 
Errand, is it, indeed! I’m not here! 


DAVID 
Not here? 


KATHLEEN 
I’m lavin’, they’ll come for me thrunk—and _ ye’ll 
witness I don’t take the candleshtick. 


DAVID 


But who’s sending you away ? 
45 


KATHLEEN 
It’s sending meself away I am—yer houly grand. 
mother has me disthroyed intirely. 


DAVID 


Why, what has the poor old la ? 





KATHLEEN 
I don’t be saltin’ the mate and I do be mixin’ the 
crockery and——_! 





DAVID [Gently] 

I know, I know—but, Kathleen, remember she was 
brought up to these things from childhood. And her 
father was a Rabbi. 


KATHLEEN 
What’s that ? A priest ? 


DAVID | 

A sort of priest. In Russia he was a great man. 
Her husband, too, was a mighty scholar, and to give 
him time to study the holy books she had to do chores 
all day for him and the children. 


KATHLEEN 
Oh, those priests ! 


DAVID [Smiling] 
No, he wasn’t a priest. But he took sick and died 
46 


and the children left her—went to America or heaven 
or other far-off places—and she was left all penniless 
and alone. 


KATHLEEN 
Poor ould lady. 


DAVID 
Not so old yet, for she was married at fifteen. 


KATHLEEN 


Poor young crathur ! 


DAVID 
But she was still the good angel of the congregation— 
sat up with the sick and watched over the dead. 


KATHLEEN 


Saints alive! And not scared ? 


DAVID 

No, nothing scared her—except me. I got a broken- 
down fiddle and used to play it even on Shabbos—I 
was very naughty. But she was so lovely to me. 
I still remember the heavenly taste of a piece of 
Motso she gave me dipped in raisin wine! Passover 
cake, you know. 


KATHLEEN [Proudly] 
Oh, J know Motso. 


DAVID [Smacks his lips, repeats| 
Heavenly ! 
47 


KATHLEEN 


Sure, I must tashte it. 


DAVID [Shaking his head, mysteriously| 
Only little boys get that tashte. 


KATHLEEN 
That’s quare. 


DAVID [Smiling] 
Very quare. And then one day my uncle sent the 
old lady a ticket to come to America. But it is not 
so happy for her here because you see my uncle has 
to be near his theatre and can’t live in the Jewish 
quarter, and so nobody understands her, and she sits 
all the livelong day alone—alone with her book and 
her religion and her memories 





KATHLEEN [Breaking down| 
Oh, Mr. David ! 


DAVID 

And now all this long, cold, snowy evening she'll 
sit by the fire alone, thinking of her dead, and the 
fire will sink lower and lower, and she won’t be able 
to touch it, because it’s the holy Sabbath, and there’ll 
be no kind Kathleen to brighten up the grey ashes, 
and then at last, sad and shivering, she’ll creep up to 
her room without a candlestick, and there in the 
dark and the cold 
48 





KATHLEEN [Hysterically bursting into tears, dropping 
her parcel, and untying her bonnet-strings| 
Oh, Mr. David, I won’t mix the crockery, | won’t-—— 


DAVID [Heartily] 

Of course you won’t. Good night. 
[He slips out hurriedly through the street-door as 
KATHLEEN throws off her bonnet, and the curtain 
falls quickly. As wt rises again, she 15 seen strenu- 


ously poking the fire, illumined by its red glow.| 


49 





Act II 


The same scene on an afternoon a month later. pDavip 
1s discovered at his desk, scribbling music 1n a fever 
of enthusiasm. MENDEL, dressed in his best, 1s 
playing softly on the piano, watching Davip. After 
an instant or two of indecision, he puts down the 
piano-lid with a bang and rises decisively. 


MENDEL 
David! — 


DAVID [Putting up hts left hand] 
Please, please —— 


[He writes feverishly. | 


MENDEL 

But I want to talk to you seriously—at once. 
DAVID 

I’m just re-writing the Finale. Oh, such a splendid 
inspiration ! 


[He writes on.] 


MENDEL [Shrugs his shoulders and reseats himself 
at piano. He plays a bar or two. Looks at watch 
impatiently. Resolutely] 

David, I’ve got wonderful news for you. Miss 

Revendal is bringing somebody to see you, and we 

have hopes of getting you sent to Germany to study 

composition. 
[Davip does not reply, but writes rapidly on.| 
51 


Why, he hasn’t heard a word ! 
[He shouts. ] 
David ! 


DAVID [Writing on] 
I can’t, uncle. I must put it down while that glorious 
impression is fresh. 


MENDEL 
What impression? You only went to the People’s 
Alliance. 


DAVID 
Yes, and there I saw the Jewish children—a thousand 
of ’em—saluting the Flag. 

[He writes on.| 


MENDEL 
Well, what of that ? 


DAVID 
What of that ? 

[He throws down his quill and jumps up.) 
But just fancy it, uncle. The Stars and Stripes 
unfurled, and a thousand childish voices, piping and 
foreign, fresh from the lands of oppression, hailing its 


fluttering folds. I cried like a baby. 


MENDEL 
I’m afraid you are one. 
52 


DAVID 
Ah, but if you had heard them — “ Flag of our Great 
Republic ” — the words have gone singing at my heart 
ever since — 
[He turns to the flag over the door.] 
“Flag of our Great Republic, guardian of our homes, 
whose stars and stripes stand for Bravery, Purity, 
Truth, and Union, we salute thee. We, the natives 
of distant lands, who find : 
[Haif-sobbing] 
rest under thy folds, do pledge our hearts, our lives, 
our sacred honour to love and protect thee, our Coun- 
try, and the liberty of the American people for ever.” 
[He ends almost hysterically] 


MENDEL [Soothingly] 
Quite right. But you needn’t get so excited over it. 


DAVID 

Not when one hears the roaring of the fires of God? 
Not when one sees the souls melting in the Crucible? 
Uncle, all those little Jews will grow up Americans ! 


MENDEL [Putting a pacifying hand on his shoulder 
and forcing him into a chair] 
Sit down. I want to talk to you about your affairs. 


DAVID [Sztting] : 

My affairs! But I’ve been talking about them all the 
time ! 

53 


MENDEL 

Nonsense, David. 

[He sits beside him.) 

Don’t you think it’s time you got into a wider 
world? 


DAVID 
Eh? This planet’s wide enough for me. 


MENDEL 
Do be serious. You don’t want to live all your life 
in this room. 


DAVID [Looks round] 
What’s the matter with this room? It’s princely. 


MENDEL [Ratsing his hands in caer 
Princely ! 


DAVID 
Imperial. Remember when I first saw it—after 
pigging a week in the rocking steerage, swinging in a 
berth as wide as my fiddle-case, hung near the cooking- 
engines; imagine the hot rancid smell of the food, 
the oil of the machinery, the odours of all that close- 
packed, sea-sick 





MENDEL [Putting his hand over paviv’s mouth] 
Don’t! You make me ill! How could you ever 
bear it ? 

54 


DAVID [Smiling] 

I was quite happy—lI only had to fancy I’d been 
shipwrecked, and that after clinging to a plank five 
days without food or water on the great lonely Atlantic, 
my frozen, sodden form had been picked up by this 
great safe steamer and given this delightful dry berht, 
regular meals, and the spectacle of all these friendly 
faces. . . . Do you know who was on board that 
boat ? Quincy Davenport. 


MENDEL 
The lord of corn and oil i 


DAVID [Smiling] 
Yes, even we wretches in the steerage felt safe to think 
the lord was up above, we believed the company 
would never dare drown /im. But could even Quincy 
Davenport command a cabin like this ? 

[Waving his arm round the room. | 
Why, uncle, we have a cabin worth a thousand dollars 
—a thousand dollars a week—and what’s more. it 
doesn’t wobble ! 

[He plants his feet voluptuously upon the floor.\ 


MENDEL 
Come, come, David, I asked you to be serious. Surely, 
some day you’d like your music produced ? 


DAVID [Fumps up] 

Wouldn’t it be glorious? To hear it all actualiy 
coming out of violins and ’cellos, drums and trumpets. 
55 


MENDEL 
And you'd like it to go all over the world ? 


DAVID 
All over the world and all down the ages. 


MENDEL 

But don’t you see that unless you go and study seriously 

in Germany ? 
[Enter KATHLEEN from kitchen, carrying a furnished 
tea-tray with ear-shaped cakes, bread and butter, 
etc., and wearing a grotesque false nose. MENDEL 
cries out in amaze. | 


Kathleen ! 





DAVID [Roaring with boyish laughter| 
Hal Ha Haih bad iiad 


KATHLEEN [Standing still with her tray] 


Sure, what’s the matter ? 


DAVID 
Look in the glass ! 


KATHLEEN [Going to the mantel] 

Houly Moses ! 
[She drops the tray, which MENDEL catches, and 
snatches off the nose.| 

Och, I forgot to take it off—twas the misthress gave 


it me- -I put it on to cheer her up. 
56 


DAVID 
Is she so miserable, then ? 


KATHLEEN 


Terrible low, Mr. David, to-day being Purim. 


MENDEL 

Purim! Is to-day Purim ? 
[Gives her the tea-tray back. KATHLEEN, to take 
it, drops her nose and forgets to pick it up.| 


DAVID 

But Purim is a merry time, Kathleen, like your Car- 
nival. Haven’t you read the book of Esther—how 
the Jews of Persia escaped massacre ? 


KATHLEEN 

That’s what the misthress is so miserable about. 
Ye don’t keep the Carnival. ‘There’s noses for both 
of ye in the kitchen—didn’t I go with her to Hester 
Street to buy ’em ?—but ye don’t be axin’ for ’em. 
And to see your noses layin’ around so solemn and 
neglected, faith, it nearly makes me chry meself. 


MENDEL [Bitterly to himself | 


Who can remember about Purim in America? 


DAVID [Half-smiling] 

Poor granny, tell her to come in and I'll play her 
Purim jig. 

57 


NENDEL [Hastily] 
Mo, no, David, not here—the visitors ! 


DAVID 
Visitors ? What visitors ? 


MENDEL [Jmpatiently] 
That’s just what I’ve been trying to explain. 


DAVID 

Well, I can play in the kitchen. 
[He takes his violin. Exit to kitchen. MENDEL 
sighs and shrugs his shoulders hopelessly at the 
boy’s perversity, then fingers the cups and saucers. | 


MENDEL [Anxiously] 
Is that the dest tea-set ? 


KATHLEEN 
Can’t you see it’s the Passover set ! 

[ Ruefully | 
And shpiled intirely it’ll be now for our Passover. . . . 
And the misthress thought the visitors saat! like to 
thry some of her Purim cakes. 

[Indicates ear-shaped cakes on tray.] 


MENDEL [Bitterly] 

Purim cakes ! 
[He turns his back on her and stares moodtly out 
of the window.| 

58 


KATHLEEN [Mutters contemptuously| 

Call yerself a Jew and you forgettin’ to keep Purim / 
[She is going back to the kitchen when a merry 
Slavic dance breaks out, softened by the door ; her 
feet unconsciously get more and more into dance 
step, and at last she jigs out. As she opens and 
passes through the door, the music sounds louder. | 


FRAU QUIXANO [Heard from kitchen] 

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Kathleen!! 
[MENDEL’s feet, too, begin to take the swing of the 
music, and his feet dance as he stares out of the 
window. Suddenly the hoot of an automobile 1s 
heard, followed by the rattling up of the car.| 


MENDEL 

Ah, she has brought somebody swell ! 
[He throws open the doors and goes out eagerly to 
meet the visitors. The dance music goes on softly 
throughout the scene. | 


QUINCY DAVENPORT [Outside] 

Oh, thank you—I leave the coats in the car. - 
[Enter an instant later QUINCY DAVENPORT and 
VERA REVENDAL, MENDEL in the rear. VERA 15 
dressed much as before, but with a motor veil, which 
she takes off during the scene. DAVENPORT 15 a 
dude, aping the air of a European sporting clubman. 
Aged about thirty-five and well set-up, he wears an 
orchid and an intermittent eyeglass, and gives the 1m- 
pression of a coarse-fibred and patronisingly facetious 
but not bad-hearted man, spoiled by prosperity. ] 

59 


MENDEL 
Won’t you be seated ? 


VERA 

First let me introduce my friend, who is good enough 
to interest himself in your nephew—Mr. Quincy 
Davenport. 


MENDEL [Struck of a heap| 
Mr. Quincy Davenport! How strange! 


VERA 
What is strange? 


MENDEL 
David just mentioned Mr. Davenport’s name—said 
they travelled to New York on the same boat. 


QUINCY 

Impossible! Always travel on my own yacht. Slow 
but select. Must have been another man of the 
same name—my dad. Ha! Ha! Ha! 


MENDEL 
Ah, of course. I thought you were too young. 


QUINCY 
My dad, Miss Revendal, is one of those antiquated 
Americans who are always in a hurry! 


VERA 
He burns coal and you burn time. 
60 


QUINCY 
Precisely! Ha! Ha! Ha! 


MENDEL 
Won’t you sit down—I’ll go and prepare David. 


VERA [Sztting] 
You’ve not prepared him yet ? 


MENDEL 
lve tried to more than once—but I never really got 
to 





[He smiles] 
to Germany. 
[quincy sits. | 


VERA 
Then prepare him for three visitors. 


MENDEL 
Three ? 


VERA 
You see Mr. Davenport himself is no judge of 
music. 


QUINCY [Fumps up| 
I beg your pardon. 


VERA 


In manuscript. 
61 


QUINCY 
Ah, of course not. Music should be heard, not seen— 
like that jolly jig. Is that your David? 


MENDEL 
Oh, you mustn’t judge him by that. He’s just 
fooling. 


QUINCY 
Oh, he’d better not fool with Poppy. Poppy’s awful 


Severe. 


MENDEL 
Poppy? 


QUINCY 


Pappelmeister—my private orchestra conductor. 


MENDEL 


Is it your orchestra Pappelmeister conducts ? 


QUINCY 
Well, J pay the piper—and the drummer too! 
[He chuckles. | 


MENDEL [Sadly] 
I wanted to play in it, but he turned me down. 


QUINCY 
I told you he was awful severe. 
[Zo vera] 


He only allows me comic opera once a week. My 
wife calls him the Bismarck of the baton. 


MENDEL [Reverently] 
A great conductor ! 


QUINCY 
Would he have a twenty-thousand-dollar job with 
me if he wasn’t? Not that he’d get half that in the 
open market—only I have to stick it on to keep him 
for my guests exclusively. 

[Looks at watch. | 
But he ought to be here, confound him. A conductor 
should keep time, eh, Miss Revendal ? 

[He sniggers. | 


MENDEL 

Pll bring David. Won’t you help yourselves to tea? 
[To vera] 

You see there’s lemon for you—as in Russia. 
[Exit to kitchen—a moment afterwards the merry 
music stops in the middle of a bar.| 


VERA 
Thank you. 
[Taking a cup.] 
Do you like lemon, Mr. Davenport ? 


QUINCY [Flirtatiously] 
That depends. The last I had was in Russia 
itseli—from the tair hands of your mother, the 


Baroness. 
63 


VERA [Pained] 


Please don’t say my mother, my mother is dead. 


QUINCY [Fatuously misunderstanding | 

Oh, you have no call to be ashamed of your step- 
mother—she’s a stunning creature; all the points of 
a tip-top Russian aristocrat, or Quincy Davenport’s 
no judge of breed! Doesn’t speak English like your 
father—but then the Baron is a wonder. 


VERA [Lakes up teapot] 

Father once hoped to be British Ambassador—that’s 
why J had an English governess. But you never told 
me you met him in Russza. 


QUINCY 
Surely! When I gave you all those love messages —— 


VERA [Pouring tea quickly] 
You said you met him at Wiesbaden. 


QUINCY 

Yes, but we grew such pals I motored him and the 
Baroness back to St. Petersburg. Jolly country, 
Russia—they know how to live. 


VERA [Coldly] 
I saw more of those who know how to die. . . . Milk 
and sugar ? 


QUINCY [Sentimentally] 
Oh, Miss Revendal! Have you forgotten ? 
04 


VERA [Politely snubbing] 


How should I remember ? 


QUINCY 

You don’t remember our first meeting? At the 
Settlement Bazaar? When I paid you a hundred 
dollars for every piece of sugar you put in? 


VERA | 

Did you? Then I hope you drank syrup. 

QUINCY | 
Ugh! I hate sugar—I sacrificed myself. 

VERA 

To the Settlement ? How heroic of you! 

QUINCY 

No, not to the Settlement. ‘Io you! 

VERA 

Then [ll only put milk in. 

QUINCY 





I hate milk. But from you 


VERA 
Then we must fall back on the lemon. 


QUINCY 


Tloathe lemon. But from—— 
65 E 


VERA 


Then you shall have your tea neat. 


QUINCY 
I detest tea, and here it would be particularly cheap 
and nasty. But 





VERA 
Then you shall have a cake! 
[She offers plate. | 


QUINCY [Taking one] 
Would they be eatable ? 

[Tasting 1t.] 
Humph! Not bad. 

[ Sentimentally | 
A little cake was all you would eat the only time 
you came to one of my private concerts. Don’t you 
remember ? We went down to supper together. 


VERA [Taking his tea for herself and putting in lemon] 
I shall always remember the delicious music Herr 
Pappelmeister gave us. 


QUINCY 
How unkind of you! 


VERA 
Unkind ? 

[She sips the tea and puts down the cup.) 
te be grateful for the music ? 


QUINCY 


You know what I mean—to forget me / 
[He tries to take her hand. | 


VERA [Rising] 
Aren’t you forgetting yourself ? 


QUINCY 

You mean because I’m married to that patched-and- 
painted creature? She’s hankering for the stage 
again, the old witch. 


VERA 
Hush! Marriages with comic opera stars are not 
usually domestic idylls. 


QUINCY 


I fell a victim to my love of music. 


VERA [Murmurs, smiling] 
Music ! 


QUINCY 
And I hadn’t yet met the right breed—the true blue 
blood of Europe. T’ll get a divorce. 
[Approaching her| 
Vera ! 


VERA [Retreating]| 


You will make me sorry [ came to you. 
67 


QUINCY . 
No, don’t say that— promised the Baron I’d always 
do all I could for 





VERA 
You promised? You dared discuss my affairs ? 


QUINCY 

It was your father began it. When he found I knew 
you, he almost wept with emotion. He asked a 
hundred questions about your life in America. 


VERA 
His life and mine are for ever separate. He is a 
Reactionary, I a Radical. 


QUINCY 

But he loves you dreadfully—he can’t understand 
why you should go slaving away summer and winter 
in a Settlement—you a member of the Russian 


nobility ! 


VERA [With faint smile] 

I might say, noblesse oblige. But the truth is, I earn 
my living that way. It would do you good to slave 
there too ! 


QUINCY [Eagerly] 
Would they chain us together ? I’d come to-morrow. 
[He moves nearer her. There 1s a double knock at 


the door. | 
68 


VERA [Relieved] 
Here’s Pappelmeister ! 


QUINCY 
Bother Poppy—why 1s he so darned punctual ? 
[Enter KATHLEEN from the kitchen. | 


VERA [Smiling] 
Ah, you’re still here. 


KATHLEEN 
And why would I not be here? 
[She goes to open the door.] 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Mr. Quixano? 


KATHLEEN 


Yes, come in. 


[Enter HERR PAPPELMEISTER, @ burly German figure 
with a leonine head, spectacles, and a mane of 
white hair—a figure that makes his employer look 
even coarser. He carries an umbrella, which be 
never lets go. Hes at first grave and silent, which 
makes any burst of emotion the more striking. He 
and QUINCY DAVENPORT suggest a picture of 
“* Dignity and Impudence.” H1s English, as roughly 


indicated 1n the text, is extremely Teutonic.| 


QUINCY 
You're late, Poppy ! 
[PAPPELMEISTER silently bows to VERA. | 


VERA [Smilingly goes and offers her hand.| 
Proud to meet you, Herr Pappelmeister ! 


QUINCY 
Excuse me 
[Introducing] 
Miss Revendal!—I forgot you and Poppy hadn’t 
been introduced—curiously enough it was at Wies- 
baden I picked him up too—he was conducting the 
opera—your folks were in my box. I don’t think I 
ever met anyone so mad on music as the Baron. 
And the Baroness told me he had retired from 
active service in the Army because of the torture 
of listening to the average military band. Ha! 


Ha! Ha! 





VERA 
Yes, my father once hoped my music would comfort 
him. 

[She smiles sadly. | 
Poor father! But a soldier must bear defeat. Herr 
Pappelmeister, may I not give you some tea ? 

[She sits again at the table.] 


QUINCY 
Tea! lLager’s more in Poppy’s line. 
[He chuckles. | 


PAPPELMEISTER [Gravely] 
Bitte. Tea. 

[She pours out, he sits.| 
7O 


Lemon. Four lumps. ... Nun, five! ... Orsix! 
[She hands him the cup. | 

Danke. 
[ds he receives the cup, he utters an exclamation, 
for KATHLEEN after opening the door has lingered on, 
hunting around everywhere, and having finally 
crawled under the tau has now brushed against 


bis leg.| 


VERA 
What are you looking for ? 


KATHLEEN [Her head emerging] 
My nose ! 
[They are all startled and amused.) 


VERA 


Your nose? 


KATHLEEN 
I forgot me nose ! 


QUINCY 
Well, follow your nose—and you'll find it. Ha! 
Ha! Ha! 


KATHLEEN [Pouncing on 1t] 
Here it is! 
[Picks it up near the armchair.) 


OMNES 
Oh! 
71 


KATHLEEN 
Sure, it’s gotten all dirthy. 
[She takes out a handkerchief and wipes the nose 


carefully. | 


QUINCY 
But why do you want a nose like that ? 


KATHLEEN [Proudly] 


Bekaz we’re Hebrews ! 


QUINCY 
What ! 


VERA 
What do you mean ? 


KATHLEEN 

It’s our Carnival to-day! Purim. 
[She carries her nose carefully and piously toward 
the kitchen. | 


VERA 
Oh! I see. 


[katt KATHLEEN. | 


QUINCY [Jn borror] 
Miss Revendal, you don’t mean to say you’ve brought 
me to a Jew! 


VERA 
I’m afraid I have. I was thinking only of his genius, 
72 


not his race. And you see, so many musicians are 
Jews. 


QUINCY 
Not my musicians. No Jew’s harp in my orchestra, 
eh? 
[He sniggers.| 
I wouldn’t have a Jew if he paid me. 


VERA 


I daresay you have some, all the same. 


QUINCY 
Impossible. Poppy! Are there any Jews in my 
orchestra ? 


PAPPELMEISTER [Removing the cup from his mouth 
and speaking with sepulchral solemnity | 
Do you mean are dere any Christians ? 


QUINCY [J horror] 


Gee-rusalem! Perhaps you're a Jew! 


PAPPELMEISTER [Gravely] 
I haf not de honour. But, if you brefer, I will gut 
out from my brogrammes all de Chewish composers. 


Was ? 
QUINCY 


Why, of course. Fire ’em out, every mother’s son 
of ’em. 
73 


PAPPELMEISTER [Unsmiling] 
Also—no more comic operas ! 


QUINCY 
What!!! 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Dey write all de comic operas ! 


QUINCY 

Brute ! 
[PAPPELMEISTER’S chuckle 1s heard gurgling 1n hts 
cup. Re-enter MENDEL from kitchen. | 


MENDEL [To vera] 
I’m so sorry—I can’t get him to come in—he’s terrible 


shy. 
QUINCY 


Won’t face the music, eh ? 
[He sniggers.| 


VERA 
Did you tell him J was here? 


MENDEL 


Of course. 


VERA [Disappointed] 
Oh! 


MENDEL 
But I’ve persuaded him to let me show his MS. 
74 


VERA [With forced satisfaction] 

Oh, well, that’s all we want. 
[MENDEL goes to the desk, opens tt, and gets the MS. 
and offers 1t to QUINCY DAVENPORT. | 


QUINCY 

Not for me—Poppy ! 
[MENDEL offers 1t to PAPPELMEISTER, who takes 1t 
solemnly.) 


MENDEL [4nxiously to PAPPELMEISTER| 
Of course you must remember his youth and his 
lack of musical education 





PAPPELMEISTER 

Bitte, das Pult / 
[MENDEL moves DAVID’s music-stand from the corner 
to the centre of the room. PAPPELMEISTER puts 
MS. on 1t.] 

So / 
[All eyes centre on him eagerly, MENDEL’ standing 
uneasily, the others sitting. PAPPELMEISTER polishes 
his glasses with irritating elaborateness and weary 
“* achs,” then reads in absolute silence. A pause.| 


QUINCY [Bored by tne silence] 
But won’t you play it to us? 


PAPPELMEISTER 

Blay it? AmJanorchestra? I blay it in my brain. 
[He goes on reading, his brow gets wrinkled. He 

75 


ruffies his hatr Conse All watch him 


anxiously—he turns the page. 
So / 


VERA [Anxicusly| 
You don’t seem to like it! 


PAPPELMEISTER 


I do not comprehend it. 


MENDEL 

I knew it was crazy—it is supposed to be about 
America or a Crucible or something. And of course 
there are heaps of mistakes. 


VERA 


That is why I am suggesting to Mr. Davenport to 
send him to Germany. 


QUINCY 
Pll send as many Jews as you like to Germany. Ha! 
Ha! Ha! 


PAPPELMEISTER [Absorbed, turning pages] 
Ach !—ach !—So ! 


QUINCY 


I’d even lend my own yacht to take ’em back. Ha! 
Ha! Ha! 


VERA 
Sh! We’re disturbing Herr Pappelmeister. 
76 | 


QUINCY 
Oh, Poppy’s all right. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Sublimely unconscious] 

Ach so—so—SO! Das 1st etwas neues ! 
[His umbrella begins to beat time, moving more 
and more vigorously, till at last he 1s conducting 
elaborately, stretching out his left palm for pranissimo 
passages, and raising 1t vigorously for forte, with 
every now and then an exclamation. | 

Wunderschon ! . . . pianissimo /—now the flutes ! 

Clarinets! Ach, ergotzlich . . . bassoons and drums! 

... Fortissimo! ... Kolossal! Kolossal ! 
[Conducting in a fury of enthusiasm. | 


VERA [Clapping her hands] 


Bravo! Bravo! I’m so excited ! 


QUINCY [Yawning] 
Then it isn’t bad, Poppy ? 


PAPPELMEISTER [Not listening, never ceasing to 
conduct | 

Und de harp solo... ach, reizend!... Second 

violins ! 





QUINCY 7 
But Poppy! We can’t be here all day. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Wot listening, continuing panto- 
mime action 

Sh! Sh! Prano. 

17 


QUINCY [Outraged] 
Sh to me / 
[Rises.1 


VERA 
He doesn’t know it’s you. 


QUINCY 

But look here, Poppy 
[He seizes the wildly-moving umbrella. Blank 
staré of PAPPELMEISTER gradually returning to 
consciousness. | 





PAPPELMEISTER 
Was giebts ...? 


QUINCY 
We’ve had enough. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Jndignant] 
Enough? Enough? Ofsucha beaudiful symphony ? 


QUINCY 

It may be beautiful to you, but to us it’s damn dull. 
See here, Poppy, if you’re satisfied that the young 
fellow has sufficient talent to be sent to study in 
Germany 





PAPPELMEISTER 
In Germany! Germany has nodings to teach him, 


he has to teach Germany. 
78 : 


VERA 
Bravo ! 


[She springs up.} 


MENDEL 


I always said he was a genius ! 


QUINCY 
Well, at that rate you aa put this stuff of his in 
one of my programmes. Sinfonia Americana, eh? 


VERA 
Oh, that zs good of you 


~~ PAPPELMEISTER 
I should be broud to indroduce it to de vorld. 


VERA 
And will it be played in that wonderful marble music- 
room overlooking the Hudson ? 


QUINCY 
Sure. Before five hundred of the smartest folk in 
America. 


MENDEL 
Oh, thank you, thank you. That will mean fame! 


QUINCY 
And dollars. Don’t forget the dollars. 
79 


MENDEL 

Pll run and tell him. 
[He hastens into the kitchen, PAPPELMEISTER 15 
re-absorbed in the MS., but no longer conducting. | 


QUINCY 


You see, I’ll help even a Jew for your sake. 


VERA 
Hush ! 


[Indicating PAPPELMEISTER. ] 


QUINCY 
Oh, Poppy’s in the moon. 


VERA 
You must help him for his own sake, for art’s sake. 


QUINCY 
And why not for heart’s aketoa my sake ? 
[He comes nearer. | 


VERA [Crossing to PAPPELMEISTER] 
Herr Pappelmeister! When do you think you can 
produce it? 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Wunderbar! ... 
[Becoming half-conscious of VERA] 
Four lumps. . . 
[Waking up] 
Bitte ? 
80 


VERA 


How soon can you produce it ? 


PAPPELMEISTER 


How soon can he finish it ? 


VERA 
Isn’t it finished ? 


PAPPELMEISTER 

I see von Finale scratched out and anoder not quite 
completed. But anyhow, ve couldn’t broduce it 
before Saturday fortnight. : 


QUINCY 
Saturday fortnight! Not time to get my crowd. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Den ve say Saturday dree veeks. Yes ? 


QUINCY | 
Yes. Stop a minute! Did you say Saturday? 
That’s my comic opera night! You thief! 


PAPPELMEISTER 


Somedings must be sagrificed. 


MENDEL [Outside] 
But you must come, David. 
[The kitchen door opens, and MENDEL drags in the 


boyishly shrinking DAVID. PAPPELMEISTER thumps 
81 F 


with his umbrella, vera claps her hands, Quincy | 
DAVENPORT produces his eyeglass and surveys DAVID 
curiously. | i 


VERA 

Oh, Mr. Quixano, I am so glad! Mr. Davenport is 
going to produce your symphony in his wonderful 
music-room. 


QUINCY 
Yes, young man, I’m going to give you the smartest 
audience in America. And if Poppy is right, you’re 
just going to rake in the dollars. America wants a 
composer. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Razses hands emphatically. | 
Ach Gott, ja! 


VERA {Zo pavip] 
Why don’t you speak? You’re not angry with me 
for interfering ? 





DAVID 
TI can never be grateful enough to you 





VERA 
Oh, not tome. It is to Mr. Davenport you 





DAVID 
And I can never te grateful enough to Herr Pappel- 
meister. It is an honour even to meet him. 


[ Bows. ] 
82 


PAPPELMEISTER [Choking with emotion, goes and 
pats him on the back.| 
Mein braver Funge ! 


VERA [Anxiously | 
But it is Mr. Davenport 





DAVID 

Before I accept Mr. Davenport’s kindness, I must 
know to whom I am indebted—and if Mr. Davenport 
is the man who—— 


QUINCY 
Who travelled with you to New York? Ha! Ha! . 
Ha! No, J’m only the junior. 


DAVID 
Oh, I know, sir, you don’t make the money you spend. 


QUINCY 
Eh? 


VERA [Anxtously] 


He means he knows you’re not in business. 


DAVID 


Yes, sir; but is it true you are in pleasure ? 


QUINCY [Puzzled] 
I beg your pardon? 
83 


DAVID | 
Are all the stories the papers print about you true? — 


QUINCY 
All the stories. That’s a tall order. Ha! Ha! Ha! 


DAVID 
Well, anyhow, is it true that 





? 


VERA 
Mr. Quixano! What are you driving at ? 


QUINCY 
Oh, it’s rather fun to hear what the masses read 
about me. Fire ahead. Is what true? 


DAVID 


That you were married in a balloon? 


QUINCY 

Ho! Ha! Ha! That’s true enough.” “Mlarriges 
in high life, they said, didn’t they? Ha! Ha! 
Ha! 


DAVID 

And is it true you live in America only two months 
in the year, and then only to entertain Europeans who 
wander to these wild parts ? 


QUINCY 

Lucky for you, young man. You'll have an Italian 
prince and a British duke to hear your scribblings. 

84 


DAVID 
And the palace where they will hear my scribblings— 
ist true that———? 


VERA [Who has been on pins and needles| 
Mr. Quixano, what possible ? 


DAVID [Entreatingly holds up a hand.| 
Miss Revendal ! 

[To QUINCY DAVENPORT] 
Is this palace the same whose grounds were turned 
into Venetian canals where the guests ate in gondolas— 
gondolas that were draped with the most wonderful 
trailing silks in imitation of the Venetian nobility in 
the great water fétes ? 


QUINCY [Turns to vera] 

Ah, Miss Revendal—what a pity you refused that 
invitation! It was a fairy scene of twinkling lights 
and delicious darkness—each couple had their own 
gondola to sup in, and their own side- canal to slip 


down. Eh? ee Ha! Ha! 


DAVID 
And the same night, women and children died of 
hunger in New York! 


QUINCY [Startled, drops eyeglass.] 
Eh? 


DAVID [Furiously] 

And this is the sort of people you would invite to hear 
my symphony—these gondola-guzzlers ! 

85 








VERA 
Mr. Quixano! 


MENDEL 
David ! 


DAVID 
These magnificent animals who went into the gondolas 
two by two, to feed and flirt ! 


QUINCY [Dazed] 
Sir ! 


DAVID 
I should be a new freak for you for a new freak evening 
—I and my dreams and my music! 


UL EN GAY) 


You low-down, ungrateful 





DAVID 
Not for you and such as you have I sat here writing and 
dreaming ; not for you who are killing my America! 


QUINCY 


Your America, forsooth, you Jew-immigrant ! 


VERA 
Mr. Davenport ! 


DAVID 


Yes—Jew-immigrant! But a Jew who knows that 
86 


your Pilgrim Fathers came straight out of his Old 
Testament, and that our Jew-immigrants are a greater 
factor in the glory of this great commonwealth than 
some of you sons of the soil. It is you, freak-fashion- 
ables, who are undoing the work of Washington and 
Lincoln, vulgarising your high heritage, and turning 
the last and noblest hope of humanity into a cari- 
cature. | 


QUINCY [Rocking with laughter] 
faeetia! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho! 
[To vERA. | | 
You never told me your Jew-scribbler was a socialist ! 


DAVID 

I am nothing but a simple artist, but I come from 
Europe, one of her victims, and I know that she is a 
failure ; that her palaces and peerages are outworn toys 
of the human spirit, and that the only hope of man- 
kind lies in a new world. And here—in the land of 
to-morrow—you are trying to bring back Europe—— 


QUINCY [Jnterjecting] 
I wish we could! 





DAVID 

Europe with her comic-opera coronets and her worm- 
eaten stage decorations, and her pomp and chivalry 
built on a morass of crime and misery-—— 


QUINCY [With sneering laugh] 
Morass ! 
87 





DAVID [With prophetic passion] 

But you shall not kill my dream! There shall come 
a fire round the Crucible that will melt you and your 
breed like wax in a blowpipe 


QUINCY [Furiously, with clenched fist] 
You 


DAVID 


America shall make good... .! 


PAPPELMEISTER [Who has sat down and remained 
imperturbably seated throughout all this scene, springs 
up and waves his umbrella hysterically | 

Hoch Quixano! Hoch! Hoch! Eslebe Quixano! Hoch! 


QUINCY 
Poppy! You’re dismissed ! 


PAPPELMEISTER [Goes to pavip with outstretched 
hand| 
Danke. 
[They grip hands. PAPPELMEISTER turns to QUINCY 
DAVENPORT. | 


Comic Opera! Ouf! 
QUINCY [Goes to street-door, at white heat.) 


Are you coming, Miss Revendal ? 


[He opens the door.| 








VERA [To quincy, but not moving] 

Pray, pray, accept my apologies—believe me, if I had 
known } 
88 





QUINCY [Furtously] 
Then stop with your Jew! 
[Exzt.] 


MENDEL [Frantically] | 

But, Mr. Davenport—don’t go! He is only a boy. 
[Exit after QUINCY DAVENPORT. | 

You must consider 





DAVID 
Oh, Herr Pappelmeister, you have lost your place! 


PAPPELMEISTER __.. 

And saved my soul. Dollars are de devil. Now I 

must to an appointment. Auf baldiges Wiedersehen. 
[He shakes pavip’s hand. | 

Fraulein Revendal ! 
[He takes her hand and kisses it. Exit. Davin 
and VERA stand gazing at each other.| 


VERA 
What have you done? What have you done? 


DAVID 
What else could I do? 


VERA 
I hate the smart set as much as you—but as your ladder 
and your trumpet 





DAVID 
I would not stand indebted to them. I know you 
i] 


meant it for my good, but what would these Europe- 
apers have understood of my America—the America 
of my music? ‘They look back on Europe as a pleasure 
ground, a palace of art—but I know 

[Getting hysterical | 
it is sodden with blood, red with bestial massacres——— 


VERA [Alarmed, anxious] 
Let us talk no more about it. 

[She holds out her hand. | 
Good-bye. 


DAVID [Frozen, taking it, holding i] 
Ah, you are offended by my ingratitude—I shall never 
see you again. 


VERA 
No, I am not offended. But I have failed to help 
you. We have nothing else to meet for. 


[She disengages her hand.| 


DAVID 
Why will you punish me so? I have only hurt 
myself. 


VERA 


It is not a punishment. 


DAVID 

What else ? When you are with me, all the air seems 
to tremble with fairy music played by some unseen 
fairy orchestra. 

go 


VERA [Tremulous] 


And yet you wouldn’t come in just now when I—— 


DAVID 
I was too frightened of the others... 


VERA [Smiling] 
Frightened indeed ! 


DAVID 

Yes, I know I became overbold—but to take all that 
magic sweetness out of my life for ever—you don’t 
call that a punishment ? | 


VERA [Blushing] 
How could I wish to punish you? I was proud of 
you ! 

[Drops her eyes, murmurs] 


Besides it would be punishing myself. 


DAVID [In passionate amaze] 
Miss Revendal! . . . But no, it cannot be. It is too 
impossible. 


VERA [Frightened] 
Yes, too impossible. Good-bye. 
[She turns. | 


DAVID 

But not for always ? 
[vera hangs her head. He comes nearer. Pas- 
stonately | 

gI 





Promise me that you—that I 
[He takes her hand again. | 


VERA [Melting at his touch, breathes] 
Yes, yes, David. 


DAVID 
Miss Revendal ! 
[She falls into his arms. | 


VERA 
My dear! my dear! 


DAVID | 
It is a dream. You cannot care for me—you so far 
above me. 


VERA 
Above you, you simple boy? Your genius lifts you 
to the stars. 


DAVID 


No, no; it is you who lift me there 





VERA [Smoothing his hair] 
Oh, David. And to think that I was brought up to 


despise your race. 


DAVID [Sadly] 
Yes, all Russians are. 
g2 


VERA 
But we of the nobility in particular. 


DAVID [Amazed, half-releasing her| 


You are noble? 


VERA 
My father is Baron Revendal, but I have long since 
carved out a life of my own. 


DAVID 
Then he will not separate us ? 


VERA 

No. 
[Re-embracing him.| 

Nothing can separate us. 
[4 knock at the street-door. They separate. The 
automobile is heard clattering off.| 


DAVID 


It is my uncle coming back. 


VERA [In low, tense tones] 
Then I shall slip out. I could not bear a third. 1 
will write. 

[She goes to the door. | 


DAVID 

eaves)... .. Vera. 
[He follows her to the door. He opens it and she 
slips out. | 

93 


MENDEL [Half-seen at the door, expostulating| 
You, too, Miss Revendal ? 

[ Re-enters. | 
Oh, David, you have driven away all your friends. 





DAVID [Going to window and looking after VERA] 
Not all, uncle. Not all. 

[He throws his arms boyishly round his uncle. | 
I am so happy. 


MENDEL 
Happy ? 


DAVID 


She loves me—Vera loves me. 


MENDEL 
Vera? 


DAVID 
Miss Revendal. 


MENDEL 
Have you lost your wits ? 
[He throws pavip off.] 


DAVID 
I don’t wonder you’re amazed. Maybe you think 
I wasn’t. It is as if an angel should stoop down 





MENDEL [Hoarsely| 
This is true? ‘This is not some stupid Purim joke ? 
94 . 


DAVID 
True and sacred as the sunrise. 


MENDEL 


But you are a Jew! 


DAVID 
Yes, and just think! She was bred up to despise 
Jews—her father was a Russian baron 





MENDEL 
If she was the daughter of fifty barons, you cannot 
marry her. 


DAVID [In pained amaze] 
Uncle ! 
[ Slozoly } 
Then your hankering after the synagogue was serious 
after all. 


MENDEL : 
It is not so much the synagogue—it is the call of 
our blood through immemorial generations. 


DAVID 

You say that! You who have come to the heart of 
the Crucible, where the roaring fires of God are fusing 
our race with all the others. 


MENDEL [Passionately] 
Not our race, not your race and mine. 
95 


DAVID 
What immunity has our race ? 

[Meditatively | 
The pride and the prejudice, the dreams and the 
sacrifices, the traditions and the superstitions, the 
fasts and the feasts, things noble and things sordid— 
they must all into the Crucible. 


MENDEL [With prophetic fury] 
The Jew has been tried 7n a thousand fires and only 
tempered and annealed. 


DAVID 
Fires of hate, not fires of love. That is what melts, 


MENDEL [Sneeringly] 


So I see. 


DAVID 

Your sneer is false. The love that melted me was 
not Vera’s—it was the love America showed me—the 
day she gathered me to her breast. 


MENDEL [Speaking passionately and rapidly] 
Many countries have gathered us. Holland took us 
when we were driven from Spain—but we did not 
become Dutchmen. Turkey took us when Germany 
oppressed us, but we have not become Turks. 


DAVID 


These countries were not in the making. They were 





old civilisations stamped with the seal of creed. In 
such countries the Jew may be right to stand out. 
But here in this new secular Republic we must look 
forward 





MENDEL [Passionately interrupting | 


We must look backwards, too. 


DAVID [A ysterically | 
To what? To Kishineff ? 
[As if seeing his vision| 
To that butcher’s face directing the slaughter? ‘To 
those ? 





MENDEL [Alarmed] 
Hush! Calm yourself ! 


DAVID [Struggling with himself] 

Yes, I will calm myself—but how else shall I calm 
myself save by forgetting all that nightmare of religions 
and races, save by holding out my hands with prayer 
and music toward the Republic of Man and the 
Kingdom of God! ‘The Past I cannot mend—its 
evil outlines are stamped in immortal rigidity. ‘Take 
away the hope that I can mend the Future, and you 
make me mad. 


MENDEL 

You are mad already—your dreams are mad—the Jew 
is hated here as everywhere—you are false to your 
race. 

97 G 


DAVID 
I keep faith with America. I have faith America will 


keep faith with us. 
[He raises his hands 1n religious rapture toward 
the flag over the door.| 
Flag of our great Republic, guardian of our homes, 
whose stars and 


MENDEL 
Spare me that rigmarole. Go out and marry your 


Gentile and be happy. 


DAVID 
You turn me out? 


MENDEL 

Would you stay and break my mother’s heart? You 
know she would mourn for you with the rending of 
garments and the seven days’ sitting on the floor. 
Go! You have cast off the God of our fathers! 


DAVID [Thundrously| 
And the God of our children—does He demand no 


service ? 
[Quieter, coming toward his uncle and touching him 
affectionately on the shoulder. | 

You are right—I do need a wider world. 
[Expands hts lungs.] 

I must go away. 


MENDEL 
Go, then—I’ll hide the truth—she must never suspect 


—lest she mourn you as dead. 


98 





FRAU QUIXANO [Outside, 1n the kitchen] 
faeeria! Ha! Ha! Ha! 
[Both men turn toward the kitchen and l1sten.] 


KATHLEEN 
fereria! Ha! Ha! Ha! 


FRAU QUIXANO AND KATHLEEN 
feoeeeria! Ha! Ha! Ha! 7 


MENDEL [Bitterly] 

A merry Purim / 
[The kitchen door opens and remains ajar. ¥FRAU 
QUIXANO rushes in, carrying DAvID’s violin and bow. 
KATHLEEN looks in, grinning. | 


FRAU QUIXANO [Ailariously] 
Nu spiel noch! sprel ! 
[She holds the violin and bow appealingly toward 


DAVID. | 


MENDEL [Putting out a protesting hand] 
No, no, David—I couldn’t bear it. 


DAVID 

But I mut! You said she mustn’t suspect. 
[He looks lovingly at her as he loudly utters these 
words, which are unintelligible to her.| 

And it may be the last time I shall ever play for her. 
[Changing to a mock merry smile as he takes the 
violin and bow from her| 

Gewiss, Granny / 
[He starts the same old Slavic dance.| 

99 


FRAU QUIXANO [Childishly pleased] 
Pe hie titer! 
[She claps on a false grotesque nose from her pocket.] 


DAVID [Torn between laughter and tears] 
Plat rat madi tan tian 


MENDEL [Shocked] 
| Mutter ! 


FRAU QUIXANO 

Un’ du auch ! | 
[She claps another false nose on MENDEL, laughing 
in childish glee at the effect. Then she starts 
dancing to the music, and KATHLEEN slips in and 


joyously dances beside her.| 


DAVID [Foining tearfully in the laughter] 

Raia iba oP an tans 
[Lhe curtain falls quickly. It rises again upon the 
picture of FRAU QUIXANO fallen back into a chair, 
exhausted with laughter, fanning herself with her 
apron, while KATHLEEN has dropped breathless across 
the arm of the armchair ; Davin 15 still playing on, 
and MENDEL, hts false nose torn off, stands by, glower- 
ing. The curtain falls again and rises upon a final 
tableau of DAviD in his cloak and hat, stealing out 
of the door with his violin, casting a sad farewell 
glance at the old woman and at the home which has 


sheltered him.| 


Act Ill 


April, about a month later. The scene changes to Miss 


tol 


REVENDAL’S sitting-room at the Settlement House 
ona sunny day. Simple, pretty furniture: a sofa, 
chairs, small table, etc. An open piano with music. 
Flowers and books about. Fine art reproductions 
on walls. The fireplace 1s on the left. A door on 
the left leads to the hall, and a door on the right to 
the interior. A servant enters from the left, ushering 
1M BARON und BARONESS REVENDAL and QUINCY 
DAVENPORT. The BARON 15 a tall, stern, grizzled 
man of military bearing, with a narrow, fanatical 
forehead and martinet manners, but otherwise of 
honest and distinguished appearance, with a short, 
well-trimmed white beard and well-cut European 
clothes. Although hts dignity 1s diminished by the 
constant nervous suspiciousness of the Russian offictal, 
it 15 never lost ; his nervousness, despite 1ts comic 
side, being visibly the tragic shadow of hts postition. 
His English has only a touch of the foreign in accent 
and vocabulary and 1s much superior to his wife's, 
which comes to her through her French. The 
BARONESS 15 pretty and dressed 1n red in the 
height of Parts fashion, but blazes with bar- 
baric jewels at neck and throat and wrist. She 
gestures freely with her hand, which, when un- 
gloved, glitters with heavy rings. She 1s much 
younger than the BARON and self-consciously fas- 
cinating. Her parasol, which matches her costume, 
suggests the sunshine without. QUINCY DAVENPORT 
is in a smart spring suit with a motor dust-coat 


and cap, whitch last he lays down on the mantel- 
piece. 


SERVANT 
Miss Revendal is on the roof-garden. I'll go and tell 
her. 

[Exit, toward the hall.| 


BARON 
A marvellous people, you Americans. Gardens in the 
sky ! 


QUINCY 

Gardens, forsooth! We plant a tub and call it 
Paradise. No, Baron. New York is the great stone 
desert. 


BARONESS 
But ze big beautiful Park vere ve drove tru? 


QUINCY 
No taste, Baroness, modern sculpture and menageries ! 
Think of the Medici gardens at Rome. 


BARONESS 

Ah, Rome! 
[With an ecstatic sigh, she drops into an armchair. 
Then she takes out a dainty cigarette-case, pulls off 
her right-hand glove, exhibiting her rings, and 
chooses a cigarette. The BARON, seeing this, pro- 


duces his match-box. | 
102 


QUINCY 

And now, dear Baron Revendal, having brought you 
safely to the den of the lioness—if I may venture to 
call your daughter so—I must leave you to do the 
taming, eh? 


BARON 


You are always of the most amiable. 
[He strikes a match. | 


BARONESS 
Tout a fait charmant. 
[Lhe Baron lights her cigarette. ] 


QUINCY [Bows gallantly] 
Don’t mention it. I’ll just have my auto take me to 
the Club, and then I’ll send it back for you. 


BARONESS 
Ah, zank you—zat street-car looks horreeble. 


[She puffs out smoke. | 
BARON 


Quite impossible. What is to prevent an anarchist 
sitting next to you and shooting out your brains ? 


QUINCY 
We haven’t much of that here—I don’t mean brains. 
maw tial Ha! 


BARON 


But I saw desperadoes spying as we came off your yacht. 
103 


QUINCY 
Oh, that was newspaper chaps. 


BARON [Shakes his head] 
No—they are circulating my appearance to all the 
gang in the States. ‘They took snapshots. 


QUINCY 

Then you’re quite safe from recognition. 
[He sniggers.] 

Didn’t they ask you questions ? 


BARON 
Yes, but Iam a diplomat. I do not reply. 


QUINCY 
That’s not very diplomatic here. Ha! Ha! 


BARON 
Diable ! 
[He claps his hand to his hip pocket, half-producing 


a pistol. The BARONESS looks equally anxious. | 


QUINCY 
What’s up? 


BARON [Poznts to window, whispers hoarsely] 
Regard! A hooligan peeped in! 


QUINCY [Goes to window] 


Only some poor devil come to the Settlement. 
104 


i 


BARON [Hoarsely] 
But under his arm-—a bomb! 


QUINCY [Shaking his head smilingly] 
A soup bowl. 


BARONESS 
ria tia! Ha! 


QUINCY 
What makes you so nervous, Baron ? 
[The paron slips back his pistol, a little ashamed.| 


BARONESS 
Ze Intellectuals and ze Bund, zey all hate my husband 
because he is faizful to Christ 
[Crossing tage 
and ze ‘T'sar. 


QUINCY 


But the Intellectuals are in Russia. 


BARON 
They have their branches here—the refugees are 
the leaders—it is a diabolical network. 


QUINCY 
Well, anyhow, we’re not in Russia, eh? No, no, 
Baron, youre quite safe. Still, you can keep my 


automobile as long as you like—I’ve plenty. 
105 


BARON 
A thousand thanks. 

[Wiping bis forehead. | 
But surely no gentleman would sit in the public car, 
squeezed between working-men and shop-girls, not 
to say Jews and Blacks. 


QUINCY 

It 7s done here. But we shall change all that. Already 
we have a few taxi-cabs. Give us time, my dear 
Baron, give us time. You mustn’t judge us by your 
European standard. 


BARON 

By the European standard, Mr. Davenport, you put 
our hospitality to the shame. From the moment you 
sent your yacht for us to Odessa—— 


QUINCY 
Pray, don’t ever speak of that again—you know how 
anxious I was to get you to New York. 


BARON 


Provided we have arrived in time! 


QUINCY 
That’s all right, I keep telling you. They aren’t 


married yet 





BARON [Grinding his teeth and shaking hits fist] 
Those Jew-vermin—all my life I have suffered from 
them ! 

106 


QUINCY 
We all suffer from them. 


BARONESS 


Zey are ze pests of ze civilisation. 


BARON 

But this supreme insult Vera shall not put on the 
blood of the Revendals—not if I have to shoot her 
down with my own hand—and myself after ! 


QUINCY 
No, no, Baron, that’s not done here. Besides, if you 
shoot her down, where do J come in, eh? 


BARON [Puzzled] 


Where you come in? 


QUINCY | 

Oh, Baron! Surely you have guessed that it is not 

merely Jew-hate, but—er—Christian love. Eh? 
[Laughing uneasily. | 


BARON 
You! 


BARONESS [Clapping her hands] 


Oh, charmant, charmant! But it ees a romance! 


BARON 
But you are married! 
107 


BARONESS [Dovoncast] 
Ab, oui. Quel dommage, vat a pecty ! 


QUINCY 
You forget, Baron, we arein America. The law giveth 
and the law taketh away. 

[He sutggers.| 


BARONESS 
It ees a vonderful country! But your vife—hein ?— 
vould she consent ? 


QUINCY 

She’s mad to get back on the stage—I’ll run a Heres 
for her. It’s your daughter’s consent that’s the real 
trouble—she won’t see me because I lost my temper 
and told her to stop with her Jew. So I look to you 
to straighten things out. 


BARONESS 
Mats parfaitement. 


BARON [Frowning at her] 

You go too quick, Katusha. What influence have I 
on Vera? And you she has never even seen! To 
kick out ANG Jew-beast is one thing. ... 


QUINCY 
Well, anyhow, don’t shoot Her abet the beast rather. 


[Sniggeringly.] 
8 


10 


BARON 

Shooting is too good for the enemies of Christ. 
[Crossing himself. ] 

At Kishineff we stick the swine. 


QUINCY |Jnterested| 
Ah! I read about that. Did you see the massacre ? 


BARON 
Which one? Give me a cigarette, Katusha. 
[She obeys. ] 


We’ve had several Jew-massacres in Kishineff. 


QUINCY 
Have you? The papers only boomed one—four or 
five years ago—about Easter time, | think 





BARON 

Ah, yes—when the Jews insulted the procession of the 

Host ! | 
[Taking a light from the cigarette in his wife's 
mouth. | 


QUINCY 
Did they? I thought—— 


BARON [Sarcastically | 
I daresay. That’s the lies they spread in the West. 
They have the Press in their hands, damn ’em. But 
you see I was on the spot. 

[He drops into a chatr.| 
I had charge of the whole district. 
109 


QUINCY [Startled] 
You! 


BARON 
Yes, and I hurried a regiment up to teach the blas- 
pheming brutes manners— 


[He puffs out a letsurely cloud. | 


QUINCY [Whistling] 
Whew! . . . I—I say, old chap, I mean Baron, you’d 
better not say that here. 


BARON 
Why not? I am proud of it. 


BARONESS 
My husband vas decorated for it—he has ze order of 
St. Vladimir. 


BARON [Proudly] 

Second class! Shall we allow these bigots to mock 
at all we hold sacred? ‘The Jews are the deadliest 
enemies of our holy autocracy and of the only orthodox 


Church. ‘Their Bund is behind all the Revolution. 


BARONESS 
A plague-spot muz be cut out ! 


QUINCY | 
Well, I’d keep it dark if I were you. Kishineff is a 
back number, and we don’t take much stock in the 


new massacres. Still, we’re a bit squeamish—— 
110 


BARON 


Squeamish! Don’t you lynch and roast your niggers ? 


QUINCY 
Not officially. Whereas your Black Hundreds 





BARON 
Black Hundreds! My dear Mr. Davenport, they are 
the white hosts of Christ 

[Crossing himself | 
and of the Tsar, who is God’s vicegerent on earth. 
Have you not read the works of our sainted Pobie- 
donostzeff, Procurator of the Most Holy Synod ? 


QUINCY 
Well, of course, I always felt there was another side 
to it, but still 





BARONESS : 

Perhaps he has right, Alexis. Our Ambassador vonce 
told me ze Americans are more sentimental zan 
civilised. 


BARON 

Ah, let them wait till they have ten million vermin 
overrunning their country—we shall see how long they 
will be sentimental. Think of it! A burrowing 
swarm creeping and crawling everywhere, ugh! ‘They 
ruin our peasantry with their loans and their drink 
shops, ruin our army with their revolutionary propa- 
ganda, ruin our professional classes by snatching all 
the prizes and professorships, ruin our commercial 
It 


classes by monopolising our sugar industries, our oil- 
fields, our timber-trade. . . . Why, if we gave them 
equal rights, our Holy Russia would be entirely run 
by them. 


BARONESS 
Mon dieu / C’est vrai. Ve real Russians vould become 
slaves. 


QUINCY 
Then what are you going to do with them ? 


BARON : 
One-third will be baptized, one-third massacred, the 
other third emigrated here. 

[He strikes a match to relight his cigarette. | 


QUINCY [Shudderingly] 

Thank you, my dear Baron,—you’ve already sent me 
one Jew too many. We’re going to stop all alien 
immigration. 


BARON 
To stop all alien—? But that is barbarous! 


QUINCY 

Well, don’t let us waste our time on the Jew-problem 
. . . our own little Jew-problem is enough, eh? Get 
rid of this little fiddler. ‘Then J may have a look in, 


Adieu, Baron. 
I1i2 


BARON 
Adieu. 
[Holding his hand] 
But you are not really serious about Vera? 
[The BARONESS makes a gesture of annoyance. | 


QUINCY 
Not serious, Baron? Why, to marry her is the only 
thing I have ever wanted that I couldn’t get. It is 
torture! Baroness, I rely on your sympathy. 

[He kisses her hand with a pretentious foreign air.| 


BARONESS [Jn sentimental approval] 
Ah! Pamour! Pamour ! 

[Exit QUINCY DAVENPORT, taking his cap in passing. | 
You might have given him a little encouragement, 
Alexis. 


BARON : 
Silence, Katusha. I only tolerated the man in Europe 
because he was a link with Vera. 


BARONESS 
You accepted his yacht and his—— 


BARON 


If I had known his loose views on divorce 





BARONESS 

I am sick of your scruples. You are ze only poor 
official in Bessarabia. 

113 H 


BARON 
Be silent! Have I not forbidden——? 


BARONESS [Petulantly] 

Forbidden! Forbidden! All your life you have served 
ze Tsar, and you cannot afford a single automobile. 
A millionaire son-in-law is just vat you owe me. 


BARON 
What I owe you? 


BARONESS i 
Yes, ven I married you, I vas tinking you had a good 
position. I did not know you were too honest to use 
it. You vere not open viz me, Alexis. 


BARON 

You knew I was a Revendal. The Revendals keep 

their hands clean... . 
[With a sudden start he tiptoes norselessly to the 
door leading to the hall and throws it open. Nobody 
1s visible. He closes it shamefacedly. | 


BARONESS [Has shared his nervousness till the door 
was opened, but now bursts into mocking laughter | 

If you thought less about your precious safety, and 

more about me and Vera 





BARON | 

Hush! You do not know Vera. You saw I was 
even afraid to give my name. She might have sent 
me away as she sent away the Tsar’s plate of mutton. 
114 


BARONESS 
The Tsar’s plate of 





BARON 

Did I never tell you? When she was only a school- 
girl—at the Imperial High School—the Tsar on his 
annual visit tasted the food, and Vera, as the show 
pupil, was given the honour of finishing his Majesty’s 
plate. 


BARONESS [Jn incredulous horror] 
And she sent it avay ? 


BARON 
Gave it to a servant. 

[Awed silence. | 
And then you think I can impose a husband on her. 
No, Katusha, I have to win her love for myself, not 
for millionaires. | 


BARONESS [Angry again] 
Alvays so affrightfully selfish ! 


BARON 

I have no control over her, tell you! 
[ Bitterly] 

I never could control my womenkind. 


BARONESS 
Because you zink zey are your soldiers. Silence! 
Halt! Forbidden! Right Veel! March! 


115 


BARON [Sullenly] 
I wish I did think they were my soldiers—I might 
try the lash. 


BARONESS [Springing up angrily, shakes parasol at 
bim| 
You British barbarian ! 


VERA [Outside the door leading to the interior] 
Yes, thank you, Miss Andrews. I know I have visitors. 


BARON [Ecstatically | 

Vera’s voice ! 
[The BARONESS lowers her parasol. He looks yearn- 
ingly toward the door. It opens. Enter vERA with 
inquiring gaze. | 


VERA [With a great shock of surprise] 
Father !! 


BARON 

Verotschka! My dearest darling! ... 
[He makes a movement toward her, but 1s checked 
by her irresponsiveness. | 

Why, you’ve grown more beautiful than ever. 


VERA 
You in New York! 


BARON 
The Baroness wished to see America. Katusha, this 


is my daughter. 
116 


BARONESS [Jn sugared sweetness] 


And mine, too, if she vill let me love her. 


VERA [Bowing coldly, but still addressing her father] 
But how? When? 


BARON 


We have just come and 





BARONESS [Dashing in| 
Zat charming young man lent us his yacht—he is 
adorahble. 


VERA 
What charming young man? 


BARONESS 
Ah, she has many, ze little coquette—ha! ha! ha! 
[She touches vera playfully with her parasol. | 


BARON 
We wished to give you a pleasant surprise. 


VERA 


It is certainly a surprise. 


BARON [Cazlled] 
You are not very . . . daughterly. 


VERA 

Do you remember when you last saw me? You did 
not claim me as a daughter then. 

117 


BARON [Covers his eyes with his hand] 


Do not recall it ; it hurts too much. 


VERA 
I was in the dock. 


BARON 

It was horrible. I hated you for the devil of rebellion 
that had entered into your soul. But I thanked God 
when you escaped. 


VERA [Softened] 
I think I was more sorry for you than for myself. 
I hope, at least, no suspicion fell on you. 


BARONESS [£agerly| 

But it did—an avalanche of suspicion. He is still 
buried under it. Vy else did they make Skovaloff 
Ambassador instead of him? Even now he risks 
everyting to see you again. Ah, mon enfant, 'you owe 
your fazer a grand reparation ! ; 


VERA 
What reparation can I possibly make ? 


BARON [Passionately | 


You can love me again, Vera. 


BARONESS [Stamping foot] 


Alexis, you are interrupting 
118 





VERA 
I fear, father, we have grown too estranged—our ideas 
are sO opposite 





BARON 
But not now, Vera, surely not now? You are no 
longer 
[He lowers his voice and looks around | 
a Revolutionist ? 


VERA 
Not with bombs, perhaps. I thank Heaven I was 
caught before I had done any practical work. But 
if you think I accept the order of things, you 
are mistaken. In Russia I fought against the 
autocracy 





BARON 
Hush! Hush ! 
[He looks round nervously. | 


VERA 

Here I fight against the poverty. No, father, a woman 
who has once heard the call will always be a wild 
creature. 


BARON 
But 
[Lowering his voice| 
those revolutionary Russian clubs here—you are not 
a member ? 
11g 


VERA 
I do not believe in Revolutions carried on at a safe 
distance. I have found my life-work in America. 


BARON 


I am enchanted, Vera, enchanted. 


BARONESS [Gushingly] 


Permit me to kiss you, belle enfant. 


VERA 
I do not know you enough yet ; I will kiss my father. 


BARON [With a great cry of joy] 
Vera ! 
[He embraces her passionately. | 
At last! At last! I have found my little Vera 
again ! 


VERA 
No, father, your Vera belongs to Russia with her mother 
and the happy days of childhood. But for their 


sakes 





[She breaks down in emotion. | 


BARON 
Ah, your poor mother ! 


BARONESS [Tartly] 
Alexis, | perceive I am too many ! 
[She begins to go toward the door.| 


120 


BARON 


No, no, Katusha. Vera will learn to 1ove you, too. 


VERA [To BaRonEss | 
What does my loving you matter? I can never 
return to Russia. 


BARONESS [Pausing] 


But ve can come here—often—ven you are married. 


VERA [Surprised] 
When I am married? 
[Softly, blushing] 


You know? 


BARONESS [Smiling] 
Ve know zat charming young man adores ze floor your 
foot treads on! 


VERA [Blushing] 


You have seen David ? 


BARON [Hoarsely| 
David ! 
[He clenches his fist.| 


BARONESS [Half aside, as much gestured as spoken] 
Sh! Leave it to me. 
[Scweetly. | 


Oh, no, ve have not seen David. 
I2I 


VERA [Looking from one to the other] 
Not seen—? Then what—whom are you talking about? 


BARONESS 
About zat handsome, quite adorahble Mr. Davenport. 


VERA 


Davenport ! 


BARONESS 
Who combines ze manners of Europe viz ze millions 
of America ! 


VERA [Breaks into girlish laughter | 

Ha! Ha! Ha! So Mr. Davenport has been talking 
to you! But you all seem to forget one small point— 
bigamy is not permitted even to millionaires. 


BARONESS 


Ah, not boz at vonce, but-——— 


VERA 
And do you think I would take another woman’s 
leavings ? No, not even if she were dead. 


BARONESS 


You are insulting ! 


VERA 
I beg your pardon—I wasn’t even thinking of you. 
Father, to put an end at once to this absurd conversa- 


tion, let me inform you I am already engaged. 
122 


BARON [Trembling, hoarse| 
By name, David. 


VERA 


Yes—David Quixano. 


BARON 
A Jew! 


VERA 
How did you know? Yes, he is a Jew, a noble Jew. 


BARON 
A Jew noble ! 
[He laughs bitterly. | 


VERA 

Yes—even as you esteem nobility—by pedigree. In 
Spain his ancestors were hidalgos, favourites at the 
Court of Ferdinand and Isabella; but in the great 
expulsion of 1492 they preferred exile in Poland to 
baptism. 


BARON 
And you, a Revendal, would mate with an unbaptized 
dog? 


VERA 
Dog! You call my husband a dog! 


BARON 
Husband! God in heaven—are you married already ? 
123 


VERA 
No! But not being unemployed millionaires like 
Mr. Davenport, we hold even our troth eternal. 

[ Calmer | 
Our poverty, not your prejudice, stands in the way 
of our marriage. But David is a musician of genius, 
and some day 





BARONESS 
A fiddler in a beer-hall! She prefers a fiddler to a 


millionaire of ze first families of America ! 


VERA [Contemptuously | 
First families! I told you David’s family came to Poland 
in 1492—-some months before America was discovered. 


BARON 


Christ save us! You have become a Jewess ! 


VERA 

No more than David has become a Christian. We 
were already at one—all honest people are. Surely, 
father, all religions must serve the same God—since 
there is only one God to serve. 


BARONESS 


But ze girl is an ateist ! 


BARON 

Silence, Katusha! Leave me to deal with my daughter. 
[Changing tone to pathos, taking her face between 
bis hands | 

124 


Oh, Vera, Verotschka, my dearest darling, I had sooner : 
you had remained buried in Siberia than that—— 


(He breaks down. | 


VERA [Touched, sitting beside him| 
For you, father, I was as though buried in Siberia. 
Why did you come here to stab yourself afresh ? 


BARON 

I wish to God I had come here earlier. I wish I 
had not been so nervous of Russian spies. Ah, 
Verotschka, if you only knew how I have pored over 
the newspaper pictures of you, and the reports of 
your life in this Settlement ! 


VERA 


You asked me not to send letters. 


BARON 

I know, I know—and yet sometimes I felt as if I 
could risk Siberia myself to read your dear, dainty 
handwriting again. 


VERA [Stzll more softened | 
Father, if you love me so much, surely you will love 
David a little too—for my sake. 


BARON [Dazed] 
I—love—a Jew? Impossible. 
[He shudders. | 


125 


VERA [Moving away, tcily] 
Then so is any love from me to you. You have 
chosen to come back into my life, and after our years 
of pain and separation I would gladly remember only 
my old childish affection. But not if you hate David. 
You must make your choice. 


BARON [Pitzfully| 
Choice? I have no choice. Can I carry mountains ? 
No more can I love a Jew. 

[He rises resolutely. ] 


BARONESS [Who has turned away, fretting and fuming, 
turns back to her husband, clapping her hands| 
Bravo ! 


VERA [Going to him again, coaxingly | 

I don’t ask you to carry mountains, but to drop the 
mountains you carry—the mountains of prejudice. 
Wait till you see him. 


BARON 


I will not see him. 


VERA 

Then you will hear him—he is going to make music 
for all the world. You can’t escape him, papasha, 
you with your love of music, any more than you 
escaped Rubinstein. 


BARONESS 
Rubinstein vas not a Jew. 
126 


VERA 


Rubinstein was a Jewish boy-genius, just like my David. 


BARONESS 

But his parents vere baptized soon after his birth. 
I had it from his patroness, ze Grande Duchesse 
Helena Pavlovna. 


VERA 

And did the water outside change the blood within ? 
Rubinstein was our Court pianist and was decorated 
by the Tsar. And you, the Tsar’s servant, dare to 
say you could not meet a Rubinstein. 


BARON [Wavering] 
I did not say I could not meet a Rubinstein. 


VERA 

You practically said so. David will be even greater 
than Rubinstein. Come, father, [ll telephone for 
him ; he is only round the corner. 


BARONESS [£xcitedly | 


Ve vill not see him! 


VERA [Ignoring ber] 
He shall bring his violin and play to you. There! 
You see, little father, you are already less frowning— 
now take that last wrinkle out of your forehead. 

[She caresses his forehead. | 
Never mind! David will smooth it out with his music 
_as his Biblical ancestor smoothed that surly old Saul. 
127 


BARONESS 
Ve vill not hear him ! 


BARON 
Silence, Katusha! Oh, my little Vera, I little thought 
when I let you study music at Petersburg 





VERA [Smiling wheedlingly | 
That I should marry a musician. But you see, little — 
father, it all ends in music after all. Now I will go 
and perform on the telephone, I’m not angel enough 
to bear one in here. 


[She goes toward the door of the hall, smiling happily. | 


BARON [With a last agonized cry of resistance] 
Halt ! 


VERA [Turning, makes mock military salute| 
Yes, papasha. 


BARON [Overcome by her roguish smile| 
You—I—he—do you love this J— this David so mucn ! 


VERA [Suddenly tragic| 
It would kill me to give him up. 
[ Resuming smile] 
But don’t let us talk of funerals on this happy day 
of sunshine and reunion. 
[She kisses her hand to him and exit toward the hall.| 


BARONESS [Azgrily] 
You are in her hands as vax! 
128 


BARON 
She is the only child I have ever had, Katusha. Her 
baby arms curled round my neck; in her baby sorrows 
her wet face nestled against little father’s. 

[He drops on a chair, and leans his head on the 


table. | 
BARONESS [Approaching tauntingly| 


So you vill have a Jew son-in-law ! 


BARON 
You don’t know what it meant to me to feel her arms 
round me again. 


BARONESS 
And a hook-nosed brat to call you grandpapa, and 
nestle his greasy face against yours. 


BARON [Banging hts fist on the table| 
Don’t drive me mad! 


[His head drops again. | 
BARONESS 


Then drive me home—I vill not meet him... 
Alexis ! 
[She taps him on the shoulder with her parasol. 
He does not move. | 
Alexis Ivanovitch! Do you not listen! ... 
[She stamps her foot. | 
Zen I go to ze hotel alone. 
[She walks angrily toward the hall. ‘Fust before 
she reaches the door, 1t opens, and the servant ushers 
129 I 


in HERR PAPPELMEISTER with his umbrella. The 
BARONESS’S tone changes instantly to a sugared 
society accent. | 
How do you do, Herr Pappelmeister ? 
[She extends her hand, which he takes limply.| 
You don’t remember me? Non? 
[Exit servant. | 
Ve vere with Mr. Quincy Davenport at Wiesbaden— 
ze Baroness Revendal. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
So / 
[He drops her hand.| 


BARONESS 


Yes, it vas ze Baron’s entousiasm for you zat got you 
your present position. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Arching his eyebrows] 
So! 


BARONESS 
Yes—zere he is ! 
[She turns toward the BARON.|] 
Alexis, rouse yourself ! 
[She taps him with her parasol.] 
Zis American air makes ze Baron so sleepy. 


BARON [Rises dazedly and bows] 


Charmed to meet you, Herr 
130 





BARONESS 
Pappelmeister! You remember ze great Pappel- 
meister. 


BARON [Waking up, becomes keen| 
Ah, yes, yes, charmed—why do you never bring your 
orchestra to Russia, Herr Pappelmeister ? 


PAPPELMEISTER [Surprised] 
Russia? It never occurred to me to go to Russia— 
she seems so uncivilised. 


BARONESS [Angry] 
Uncivilised! Vy, ve have ze finest restaurants in ze 
vorld! And ze best telephones ! 


PAPPELMEISTER 
So ? 


BARONESS 
Yes, and the most beautiful ballets—Russia is affright- 
fully misunderstood. 
[She sweeps away in burning indignation. PAPPEL- 
MEISTER murmurs in deprecation. Re-enter VERA 


from the hall. She 1s gay and happy.| 
VERA 


He is coming round at once 
[She utters a cry of pleased surprise. | 
Herr Pappelmeister! ‘This is indeed a pleasure ! 


[She gives PAPPELMEISTER her hand, which he kisses. | 
131 





BARONESS [Sotto voce to the Baron] 
Let us go before he comes. 
[The Baron ignores her, his eyes hungrily on vera. | 


PAPPELMEISTER [Zo vera] 


But I come again—you have visitors. 


VERA [Smiling] 
Only my father and 





PAPPELMEISTER [Surprised] 
Your fader? Ach so/ 

[He taps his forehead. | 
Revendal ! 


BARONESS [Sotto voce to the BARON] 
I vill not meet a Jew, I tell you. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
But you vill vant to talk to your fader, and all J vant 
is Mr. Quixano’s address. De Irish maiden at de house 
says de bird is flown. 


VERA [Gravely] 
I don’t know if I ought to tell you where the new 
nest 1s 





PAPPELMEISTER [Disappointed] 
Ach! 


VERA [Smiling] 
But | will produce the bird. 


132 


PAPPELMEISTER [Looks round] 


You vill broduce Mr. Quixano ? 


VERA [Merrily] 
By clapping my hands. 
[Mystertously | 


I am a magician. 


BARON [Whose eyes have been glued on vERA] 
You are, indeed! I don’t know how you have 
bewitched me. 

[The Baroness glares at him. | 


VERA 
Dear little father ! 
[She crosses to him and strokes his hair.| 
Herr Pappelmeister, tell father about Mr. Quixano’s 
music. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Shaking his head] 
Music cannot be talked about. 


VERA [Smiling] 
That’s a nasty one for the critics. But tell father 
what a genius Da— Mr. Quixano 1s. 


BARONESS [Desperately intervening] 
Good-bye, Vera. 

[She thrusts out her hand, which vera takes. | 
Diehave’ a headache. You muz excuse me. Herr 
Pappelmeister, au plaisir de vous revoir. 

[PAPPELMEISTER hastens to the door, which he bolds 

open. The BARONESS turns and glares at the BARON. | 
133 


BARON [Agitated] 


Let me see you to the auto—— 


BARONESS 


You could see me to ze hotel almost as quick. 


BARON [To vera] 

I won’t say good-bye, Verotschka—I shall be back. 
[He goes toward the hall, then turns. | 

You will keep your Rubinstein waiting ? 
[verA smiles lovingly. | 


BARONESS 
You are keeping me vaiting. 
[He turns quickly. Exeunt BARON and BARONESS. | 


PAPPELMEISTER 
And now broduce Mr. Quixano ! 


VERA 
Not so fast. What are you going to do with him ? 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Put him in my orchestra ! 


VERA [Ecstatic] 
Oh, you dear ! 

[Lhen her tone changes to disappointment. | 
But he won’t go into Mr. Davenport’s orchestra. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
It is no more Mr. Davenport’s orchestra. He fired 


134 


me, don’t you remember? Now I boss—how say 
you in American ? 


VERA [Smiling| 


Your own show. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Fa, my own band. Ven I left dat comic opera 
millionaire, dey all shtick to me almost to von man. 


VERA 
How nice of them ! 


PAPPELMEISTER 

All egsept de Christian—he vas de von man. He 
shtick to de millionaire. So I lose my brincipal first 
violin. 


VERA 
And Mr. Quixano is to—oh, how delightful ! 
[She claps her hands girlishly.| 


PAPPELMEISTER [Looks round mischievously | 
Ach, de magic failed. 


VERA [Puzzled] 
Eh ! 


PAPPELMEISTER 
You do not broduce him. You clap de hands—but 
you do not broduce him. Ha! Ha! Ha! 
[He breaks into a great roar of genial laughter.) 
135 


VERA [Chiming in merrily | 
Ha! Ha! Ha! But I said I have to know everything 
first. Will he get a good salary ? 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Enough to keep a vife and eight children ! 


VERA [Blushing] 
But he hasn’t a 





PAPPELMEISTER 

No, but de Christian had—he get de same—I mean 
salary, ha! ha! ha! not children. Den he can be 
independent—vedder de fool-public like his American - 
symphony or not—nicht wabr ? 


VERA 

You are good to us 
[Hastily correcting herself | 

to Mr. Quixano. 





PAPPELMEISTER [Smiling] 
And aldough you cannot broduce him, I broduce his 
symphony. Was? 


VERA 
Oh, Herr Pappelmeister! You are an angel. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Nein, nein, mein liebes Kind! I fear I haf not de 
correct shape for an angel. 

[He laughs heartily. A knock at the door from the hall.| 
136 


VERA [Merrily] 
Now I clap my hands. 
[She claps. | 
Come! 
|The door opens. | 
Behold him ! 
[She makes a conjurer’s gesture. DAviD, bare- 
headed, carrying his fiddle, opens the door, and 


stands staring 1n amazement at PAPPELMEISTER. | 


DAVID 
I thought you asked me to meet your father. 


PAPPELMEISTER | 
She is a magician. She has changed us. 
[He waves his umbrella. | 
Hey presto, was? Ha! Ha! Ha! 
(He goes to DAVID, and shakes hands.| 
Und wie geht’s? I hear you’ve left home. 


DAVID 
Yes, but I’ve such a bully cabin—— 


PAPPELMEISTER [Alarmed] 


You are sailing avay ? 


VERA [Laughing] 
No, no—that’s only his way of describing his two- 
dollar-a-month garret. 


DAVID 
Yes—my state-room on the top deck ! 
137 


VERA [Smiling] 


Six foot square. 


DAVID 
But three other passengers aren’t squeezed in, and 
it never pitches and tosses. It’s heavenly. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Smiling| 
And from heaven you flew down to blay in dat beer- 
hall. Was? 

[pavip looks surprised. ] 


I heard you. 


DAVID 
You! What on earth did you go there for ? 


PAPPELMEISTER 

Vat on earth does one go to a beer-hall for? Ha! 

Ha! Ha! For vawter! Ha! Hal) oa 

hear you blay, I dink mit myself—if my blans succeed 

and I get Carnegie Hall for Saturday Symphony 

Concerts, dat boy shall be one of my first violins. Was ? 
[He slaps pavip on the left shoulder. | 


DAVID [Overwhelmed, ecstatic, yet wincing a little at 
the slap on his wound] 
Be one of your first 
[ Remembering | 
Oh, but it is impossible. 





VERA [Alarmed] 


Mr. Quixano! You must not refuse. 
138 


DAVID 
But does Herr Pappelmeister know about the wound 
in my shoulder ? 


PAPPELMEISTER [Agitated] 
You haf been vounded ? 


DAVID 
Only a legacy from Russia—but it twinges in some 
weathers. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
And de pain ubsets your blaying ? 


DAVID 
Not so much the pain—it’s all the dreadful memories— 


VERA [Alarmed] 
Don’t talk of them. 


DAVID 
I must explain to Herr Haare saree wouldn’t be 
fair. Even now 

[Shuddering| 
there comes up before me the bleeding body of my 
mother, the cold, fiendish face of the Russian officer, 
supervising the slaughter 





VERA . 
Hush! Hush ! 
139 


DAVID [Aysterically| 
Oh, that butcher’s face—there it is—hovering in the 
air, that narrow, fanatical forehead, that 





PAPPELMEISTER [Brings down his umbrella with a 
bang| 
Schluss! No man ever dared break down under me. 
My baton will beat avay all dese faces and fancies. 
Out with your violin ! 
[He taps his umbrella impertously on the table.| 
Keinen Mut verlieren ! 
[pavip takes out his violin from its case and puts it 
to bis shoulder, PAPPELMEISTER keeping up a hypnotic 
torrent of encouraging German cries. | 
Also! Fertig! Anfangen ! 
[He raises and waves his umbrella like a baton. | 
Von, dwo, dree, four 





DAVID [With a great sigh of reltef | 
Thanks, thanks—they are gone already. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Ha! Ha! Ha! You see.’ And ven) ver blayivous 
American symphony 





DAVID [Dazed] 
You will play my American symphony ? 


VERA [Disappointed] 
Don’t you jump for joy? 
140 


DAVID [Still dazed but ecstatic] 
Herr Pappelmeister ! 

[Changing back to despondency]| 
But what certainty is there your Carnegie Hall 
audience would understand me? It would be the 
same smart set. 


[He drops dejectedly into a chair and lays down his 


violin. | 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Ach, nein. Of course, some—ve can’t keep peoble 


out merely because dey pay for deir seats. Was ? 
[He laughs. | 


DAVID 

It was always my dream to play it first to the new 
immigrants—those who have known the pain of the 
old world and the hope of the new. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Try it on the dog. Was? 


DAVID 


Yes—on the dog that here will become a man ! 


PAPPELMEISTER [Shakes his head] 


I fear neider dogs nor men are a musical breed. 


DAVID 

The immigrants will not understand my music with 
their brains or their ears, but with their hearts and 
their souls. 

141 


VERA 
Well, then, why shouldn’t it be done here—on our 
Roof-Garden ? 


DAVID [Fumping up] 
A Bas-Kél! A Bas-Kél! 


VERA 
What are you talking ? 


DAVID 


Hebrew! It means a voice from heaven. 


VERA 
Ah, but will Herr Pappelmeister consent ? 


PAPPELMEISTER [Bowing] 


Who can disobey a voice from heaven? . . . But ven? 


VERA 
On some holiday evening. . . . Why not the Fourth 
of July? 


DAVID [Stl] more ecstatic] 

Another Bas-Kél/... My American Symphony! 

Played to the People! Under God’s sky! On Inde- 

pendence Day! With all the 
[Waving his hand expressively, sighs voluptuously. | 

That will be too perfect. 





PAPPELMEISTER [Smiling] 
Dat hasto beseen. You must permit me to invite 
142 





DAVID [Jn borror] 


Not the musical critics ! 


PAPPELMEISTER [Raising both hands with umbrella 
in equal horror] 

Gott bewahre! But I'd like to invite all de persons 

in New York who really undershtand music. 


VERA 
Splendid! But should we have room ? 


PAPPELMEISTER 


Room? I vant four blaces. 


VERA [Smiling] 


You are severe! Mr. Davenport was right. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Smiling] 

Perhaps de oders vill be out of town. Also / 
[Holding out his hand to pavip| 

You come to Carnegie to-morrow at eleven. Yes? 

Fraulein. ; 
[Kisses her hand. | 

Auf Wiedersehen ! 
[Going] 

On de Roof-Garden—anicht wabr ? 


VERA [Smiling] 
Wind and weather permitting. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Thafalvaysmeinumbrella. Was? Ha! Ha! Ha! 
143 


VERA [Murmuring]| 
Isn’t he a darling? Isn’t he ? 





PAPPELMEISTER [Pausing suddenly] 


But ve never settled de salary. 


DAVID 
Salary ! 

[He looks dazedly from one to the other.| 
For the honour of playing in your orchestra ! 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Shylock! ! ... Never mind—ve settle de pound of 
flesh to-morrow. Lebe wohl / 

[Exit, the door closes. | 


VERA [Suddenly miserable] 
How selfish of you, David ! 


DAVID 
Selfish, Vera ? 


VERA , 
Yes—not to think of your salary. It looks as if you 
didn’t really love me. 


DAVID 


Not love you? I don’t understand. 


VERA [Half in tears| 

Just when I was so happy to think that now we shall 
be able to marry. 

144 


DAVID 
Shall we? Marry? On my salary as first violin? 


VERA 
Not if you don’t want to. 


DAVID 
Sweetheart! Canit be true? How do you know? 


VERA [Smiling] 


I’m not a Jew. I asked. 


DAVID 
My guardian angel ! 
[Embracing her. He sits down, she lovingly at hts 


feet.] 


VERA [Looking up at him] 
Then you do care? 


DAVID 
What a question ! 


VERA 
And youdon’t think wholly of yourmusic and forget me? 


DAVID 
Why, you are behind all I write and play! 


VERA [With jealous passion] 

Behind? But I want to be before! I want you to 
love me first, before everything. 

145 x 


DAVID 
I do put you before everything. 


VERA 

You are sure? And nothing shall part us ? 
DAVID 

Not all the seven seas could part you and me. 
VERA 


And you won’t grow tired of me—not even when you 
are world-famous ? 


DAVID [A shade petulant] 
Sweetheart, considering I should owe it all to you 








VERA [Drawing his head down to her breast] 

Oh, David! David! Don’t be angry with poor 
little Vera if she doubts, if she wants to feel quite 
sure. You see father has talked so terribly, and after | 
all I was brought up in the Greek Church, and we 
oughtn’t to cause all this suffering unless 





DAVID 

Those who love us must suffer, and we must suffer in 
their suffering. It is live things, not dead metals, 
that are being melted in the Crucible. 


VERA 
Still, we ought to soften the suffering as much as— 


DAVID 
Yes, but only Time can heal it. 
146 


VERA [With transition to happiness] 

But father seems half-reconciled already! Dear 
little father, if only he were not so narrow about Holy 
Russia ! 


DAVID 

If only my folks were not so narrow about Holy 
Judea! But the ideals of the fathers shall notbe 
foisted on the children. Each generation must live 
and die for its own dream. 


VERA 
Yes, David, yes. You are the prophet of the living 
resent. Iam so happy. 
[She looks up wistfully. | 
You are happy, too ? 


DAVID . 
I am dazed—I cannot realise that all our troubles have 
melted away—it is so sudden. 


VERA 
You, David? Who always see everything in such 
rosy colours? Now that the whole horizon is one 
great splendid rose, you almost seem as if gazing out 
toward a blackness 


DAVID 
We Jews are cheerful in gloom, mistrustful in joy. It 
is our tragic history 


VERA 

But you have come to end the tragic history ; to throw 
off the coils of the centuries. 

147 








DAVID [Smiling again] 

Yes, yes, Vera. You bring back my sunnier self. I 

must be a pioneer on the lost road of happiness. 

To-day shall be all joy, all lyric ecstasy. 

[He takes up his violin. ] 

Yes, I will make my old fiddle-strings burst with joy ! 
[He dashes into a jubilant tarantella. After a few 
bars there 1s a knock at the door leading from the 
hall; their happy faces betray no sign of hearing 
tt ; then the door slightly opens, and BARON REVEN- 
DAL’S head looks hesttatingly 1n. As DAVID per- 
ceives it, his features work convulsively, his string 
breaks with a tragic snap, and he totters backward 
into VERA’s arms. Hoarsely| 


The face! The face! 


VERA 
David—my dearest ! 


DAVID [Hits eyes closed, bis violin clasped mechanically | 
Don’t be anxious—I shall be better soon—I oughtn’t 
to have talked about it—the hallucination has never 
been so complete. 


VERA 

Don’t speak—rest against Vera’s heart—till it has 

passed away. 
[The BARON comes daxedly forward, half with a 
shocked sense of VERA’s impropriety, half to reheve 
her of her burden. She motions him back.| 


This is the work of your Holy Russia. 
148 


BARON [Harshly] 
What is the matter with him ? 
[pavip’s violin and bow drop from his grasp and 


fall on the table.| 


DAVID 

The voice ! 
[He opens his eyes, stares frenziedly at the BARON, 
then struggles out of VERA’S arms.] 


VERA [Trying to stop him] 


Dearest 





DAVID 

Let me go. 
[He moves Itke a sleep-walker toward the paralysed 
BARON, puis out his hand, and testingly touches the 


face.| 


BARON [Shuddering back] 
Hands off ! 


DAVID [With a great cry] 
A-a-a-h! It is flesh and blood. No, it is stone—the 
man of stone! Monster ! 


[He raises his hand frenztedly. | 


BARON [Whipping out bts pistol] 
Back, dog! , 

[vera darts between them with a shriek. | 
149 


DAVID [Frozen again, surveying the pistol stontly| 
Ha! You want my life, too. Is the cry not yet 
loud enough? 


BARON 
The cry ? 


DAVID [Mystically] 

Can you not hear it? The voice of the blood of my 
brothers crying out against you from the ground? 
Oh, how can you bear not to turn that pistol against 
yourself and execute upon yourself the justice which 
Russia denies you ? 


BARON 
Tush ! 
[Pocketing the pistol a little shamefacedly.| 


VERA 
Justice on himself ? For what? 


DAVID 
For crimes beyond human penalty, for obscenities 
beyond human utterance, for 





VERA 


You are raving. 


DAVID 
Would to heaven I were ! 
150 


wERA 
But this is my father. 


DAVID 
Your father! . . . God! 
[He staggers. | 


BARON [Drawing her to him| 
Come, Vera, I told you 





VERA meray, tates back | 


Don’t touch me! 


BARON [Starting back 1n amaze] 
Vera ! 


VERA [Hoarsely] 
Say it’s not true. 


BARON 
What is not true? 


VERA 
What David said. It was the mob that massacred— 
you had no hand in it. 


BARON [Sullenly] 


I was there with my soldiers. 


DAVID [Leaning, pale, against a chair, hisses] 

And you looked on with that cold face of hate—while 
my mother—my sister 
ISI 





BARON [Sullenly] 
I could not see everything. 


DAVID 
Now and again you ordered your soldiers to fire—— 


VERA [In joyous relief] 
Ah, he did check the mob—he dzd tell his soldiers to 
fire. 


DAVID 
At any Jew who tried to defend himself. 


VERA 

Great God ! 
[She falls on the sofa and buries her head on the 
cushion, moaning | 

Is there no pity in heaven ? 


DAVID 
There was no pity on earth. 


BARON 

It was the People avenging itself, Vera. ‘The People 
rose like a flood. It had centuries of spoliation to 
wipe out. The voice of the People is the voice of 


God. 


VERA [Meaning] 


But you could have stopped them. 
152 


BARON 
I had no orders to defend the foes of Christ and 

[Crossing himself] 
the Tsar. ‘The People 





VERA 
But you could have stopped them. 


BARON 
Who can stop a flood? I did my duty. A soldier’s 


duty is not so pretty as a musician’s. 
y pretty 


VERA 7 
But you could have stopped them. 


BARON [Losing all patience] 
Silence! You talk like an ignorant girl, blinded by 
passion. The pogrom is a holy crusade. Are we 
Russians the first people to crush down the Jew? 
-No—from the dawn of history the nations have had 
to stamp upon him—the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the 
Persians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans 





DAVID 
Yes, it is true. Even Christianity did not invent 
hatred. But not till Holy Church arose were we 
burnt at the stake, and not till Holy Russia arose were 
our babes torn limb from limb. Oh, it is too much! 
Delivered from Egypt four thousand years ago, to be 
slaves to the Russian Pharaoh to-day. 
[He falls as if kneeling on a chair, and leans bis 
head on the rail.] 
153 


O God, shall we always be broken on the wheel of 
history ? How long, O Lord, how long? 


BARON [Savagely] 

Till you are all stamped out, ground into your dirt. 
[ Tenderly | 

Look up, little Vera! You saw how papasha loves 

you—how he was ready to hold out his hand—and 

how this cur tried to bite it. Be calm—tell him a 

daughter of Russia cannot mate with dirt. 


VERA 
Father, I will be calm. I will speak without passion 
or blindness. I will tell Davidthe truth. I was never 
absolutely sure of my love for him—perhaps that was 
why I doubted his love for me—often after our 
enchanted moments there would come a nameless 
uneasiness, some vague instinct, relic of the long 
centuries of Jew-loathing, some strange shrinking from 
his Christless creed 





BARON [With an exultant cry] 
Ah! She is a Revendal. 


VERA 
But now 
[She rises and walks firmly toward pavip] 
now, David, I come to you, and I say in the words 
of Ruth, thy people shall be my people and thy God 
my God ! 
[She stretches out her hands to pavip.| 





154 


BARON 

You shameless ! 
[He stops as he perceives DavID remains im- 
passive. | 





VERA [With agonised cry] 
David ! 


DAVID [In low, icy tones] 
You cannot come to me. ‘There is a river of blood 
between us. 


VERA 


Were it seven seas, our love must cross them. 


DAVID 
Easy words to you. You never saw that red flood 
bearing the mangled breasts of women and the spat- 
tered brains of babes and sucklings. Oh! 
[He covers his eyes with his hands. The BARON 
turns away in gloomy impotence. At last DAvID 
‘ begins to speak quietly, almost dreamily.| 
It was your Easter, and the air was full of holy bells 
and the streets of holy processions—priests in black 
and girls in white and waving palms and crucifixes, 
and everybody exchanging Faster eggs and kissing 
one another three times on the mouth in token of 
peace and goodwill, and even the Jew-boy felt the 
spirit of love brooding over the earth, though he did 
not then know that this Christ, whom holy chants 
proclaimed re-risen, was born in the form of a brother 
155 


Jew. And what added to the peace and holy joy was 
that our own Passover was shining before us. My 
mother had already made the raisin wine, and my 
greedy little brother Solomon had sipped it on the 
sly that very morning. We were all at home—all 
except my father—he was away in the little Synagogue 
at which he was cantor. Ah, such a voice he had— 
a voice of tears and thunder—when he prayed it was 
like a wounded soul beating at the gates of Heaven— 
but he sang even more beautifully in the ritual of 
home, and how we were looking forward to his hymns 
at the Passover table 
[He breaks down. The Baron has gradually turned 
round under the spell of DAviv’s story and now 
listens hypnotised. | 
I was playing my cracked little fiddle. Little Miriam 
was making her doll dance to it. Ah, that decrepit 
old china doll—the only one the poor child had ever 
had—I can see it now—one eye, no nose, half an arm. 
We were all laughing to see it caper to my music. 
. . . My father flies in through the door, desperately 
clasping to his breast the Holy Scroll. We cry out 
to him to explain, and then we see that in that beloved 
mouth of song there is no longer a tongue—only 
blood. He tries to bar the door—a mob breaks in— 
we dash out through the back into the street. There 
are the soldiers—and the Face 
[vERA’s eyes involuntarily seek the face of her 
father, who shrinks away as their eyes meet.| 








VERA [Jn a low sob] 
O God! 
156 


DAVID 
When I came to myself, with a curious aching in my 
left shoulder, I saw lying beside me a strange shapeless 
Something .... 
[DavID points weirdly to the floor, and vera, hunched 
forwards, gazes stonily at it, as if seeing the 
horror. | 
By the crimson doll in what seemed a hand I knew it 
must be little Miriam. ‘The doll was a dream of 
beauty and perfection beside the mutilated mass 
which was all that remained of my sister, of my mother, 
of greedy little Solomon— Oh! You Christians 
can only see that rosy splendour on the horizon of 
happiness. And the Jew didn’t see rosily enough for 
you, ha! ha! ha! the Jew who gropes in one great 
crimson mist. 
[He breaks down in spasmodic, tronic, long-drawn, 
terrible laughter. | 


VERA [Irying vainly to tranquillise him| 
Hush, David! Your laughter hurts more than tears. 
Let Vera comfort you. 
[She kneels by his chair, tries to put her arms round 
him. | 


DAVID [Shuddering] 
Take them away! Don’t you feel the cold dead 
pushing between us? 


VERA [Unfaltering, moving his face toward her lips] 
Kiss me ! 
157 


DAVID 
I should feel the blood on my lips. 


VERA 
My love shall wipe it out. 


DAVID 
Love! Christian love! 
[He unwinds her clinging arms ; she sinks prostrate 
on the floor as he rises. | 
For this I gave up my people—darkened the home 
that sheltered me—there was always a still, small 
voice at my heart calling me back, but I heeded 
nothing—only the voice of the butcher’s daughter. 
[ Brokenly | 
Let me go home, let me go home. 
[He looks lingeringly at vera’s prostrate form, but 
overcoming the instinct to touch and comfort her, 
begins tottering with uncertain pauses toward the 
door leading to the hall.| 


BARON [Evtending his arms in relief and longing] 
And here is your home, Vera ! 
[He raises her gradually from the floor; she 
1s dazed, but suddenly she becomes conscious of 
whose arms she 1s in, and utters a cry of repul- 
ston. | 


VERA 
Those arms reeking from that crimson river ! 


[She falls back. | 
158 


BARON [Sullenly| 
Don’t echo that babble. You came to these arms 
often enough when they were fresh from the battle- 


field. 


VERA 

But not from the shambles! You heard what he 

called you. Not soldier—butcher! Oh, I dared to 

dream of happiness after my nightmare of Siberia, but 

you—you 
[She breaks down for the first time in hysterical sobs. | 





BARON [Brokenly]| 
Mera tittle Vera! Don’t cry!. You stab me! 


VERA 
You thought you were ordering your soldiers to fire 
at the Jews, but it was my heart they pierced 

[She sobs on. | 


BARON 

... And my own. ... But we will comfort each 
other. I will go to the Tsar myself—with my fore- 
head to the earth—to beg for your pardon!... 
Come, put your wet face to little father’s... . 


VERA [Violently pushing his face away] 

Ihate you! Icurse the day I was born your daughter ! 
[She staggers toward the door leading to the intertor. 
At the same moment vavip, who has reached the 
door leading to the hall, now feeling subconsciously 
that VERA 1s going and that his last reason for 

159 


lingering on 15 removed, turns the door-handle. The 
click attracts the BARON’s attention, be veers 
round. | 


BARON [To pavip| 

Halt ! 
[pavip turns mechanically. vera drifts out through 
her door, leaving the two men face to face. The 
BARON beckons to DAVID, who as tf hypnotised moves 
nearer. The BARON whips out his pistol, slowly 
crosses to DAVID, who stands as 1f awatting bis fate. 
The BARON hands the pistol to pavip. | 

You were right ! 
[He steps back swiftly with a touch of stern heroism 
into the attitude of the culprit at a military execu- 
tion, awatting the bullet. | 

Shoot me ! 


DAVID [Takes the pistol mechanically, looks long and 
pensively at it as with a sense of tts irrelevance. 
Gradually his arm droops and lets the pistol fall 
on the table, and there his hand touches a string of 
his violin, which yields a litile note. Thus reminded 
of it, be picks up the violin, and as his fingers draw 
out the broken string he murmurs] 

I must get a new string. 

[He resumes his dragging march toward the door, 
repeating maunderingly | 

I must get a new string. 


[Lhe curtain falls. | 


160 


Act IV 
Saturday, Fuly 4, evening. The Roof-Garden of the 


Settlement House, showing a beautiful, far-stretching 
panorama of New York, with its irregular sky- 
buildings on the left, and the harbour with its Statue 
of Liberty on the right. Everything 1s wet and 
gleaming after rain. Parapet at the back. Elevator 
on the right. Entrance from the stairs on the left. 
In the sky hang heavy clouds through whtch thin, 
golden lines of sunset are just beginning to labour. 
DAVID 15 discovered on a bench, hugging his violin- 
case to his breast, gazing moodily at the sky. A 
muffled sound of applause comes up from below and 
continues with varying intensity through the early 
part of the scene. Through 1t comes the notse of the 
elevator ascending. MENDEL steps out and hurries 


forward. 


MENDEL 
Come down, David! Don’t you hear them shouting 
for you? 


[He passes bis hand over the wet bench.| 


Good heavens! You will get rheumatic fever ! 


DAVID 
Why have you followed me? 


MENDEL | 
Get up—everything is still damp. 


DAVID [Rising, gloomily| 


Yes, there’s a damper over everything. 


161 


MENDEL 

Nonsense—the rain hasn’t damped your triumph in 
the least. In fact, the more delicate effects wouldn’t 
have gone so well in the open air. Listen! 


DAVID 
Let them shout. Who told you I was up here? 


MENDEL 


Miss Revendal, of course. 


DAVID [Agitated] 
Miss Revendal ? How should she know? 


MENDEL [Sullenly] 


She seems to understand your crazy ways. 


DAVID [Passing his hand over his eyes| 
Ah, you never understood me, uncle. . . . How did 


she look? Was she pale? 


MENDEL 

Never mind about Miss Revendal. Pappelmeister 
wants you—the people insist on seeing you. Nobody 
can quiet them. 


DAVID 
They saw me all through the symphony in my place 


in the orchestra. 


MENDEL 
They didn’t know you were the composer as well 
162 


as the first violin. Now Miss Revendal has told 
them. 

[Louder applause. | 
There! Eleven minutes it has gone on—like for 
an office-seeker. You must come and show yourself. 


DAVID 
I won’t—I’m not an office-seeker. Leave me to my 
misery. 


MENDEL 

Your misery? With all this glory and greatness 

opening before you? Wait till you’re my age 
[Shouts of ** qutxano !”’] 

You hear! What is to be done with them ? 





DAVID 
Send somebody on the platform to remind them this 
is the interval for refreshments ! 


MENDEL 

Don’t be cynical. You know your dearest wish was 
to melt these simple souls with your music. And 
now 





DAVID 
Now I have only made my own stony. 


MENDEL 
You are right. You are stone all over—ever since 
you came back home to us. ‘Turned into a pillar of 
salt, mother says—like Lot’s wife. 

163 


DAVID 
That was the punishment for looking backward. Ah, 
uncle, there’s more sense in that old Bible than 
the Rabbis suspect. Perhaps that is the secret of 
our people’s paralysis—we are always looking back- 
ward. 
[He drops hopelessly into an tron garden-chair 
behind him. | 


MENDEL [Stopping him before he touches the seat] 
Take care—it’s sopping wet. You don’t look back- 
ward enough. 
[He takes out his handkerchief and begins drying 
the chair.| 


DAVID [Faznily smiling] 
I thought you wanted the salt to melt. 


MENDEL 
It zs melting a little if you can smile. Do you know, 
David, I haven’t seen you smile since that Purim 
afternoon ? 


DAVID 
You haven’t worn a false nose since, uncle. 

[He laughs bitterly.] 
Ha! Ha! Ha! Fancy masquerading in America 
because twenty-five centuries ago the Jews escaped a 
pogrom in Persia. ‘Two thousand five hundred years 
ago! Aren’t we uncanny? 

[He drops into the wiped chatr.| 
164 


MENDEL [Angrily] 

Better you should leave us altogether than mock at 
us. I thought it was your Jewish heart that drove 
you back home to us; but if you are still hankering 
after Miss Revendal 





DAVID [Pained] 
Uncle ! 


MENDEL 
I’d rather see you marry her than go about like this. 
You couldn’t make the house any gloomier. 


DAVID 
Go back to the concert, please. They have quieted 
down. 


MENDEL [Hesitating| 
And you? 


DAVID 

Oh, I’m not playing in the popular after-pieces. 
Pappelmeister guessed I’d be broken up with the 
stress of my own symphony—he has violins enough. 


MENDEL 
Then you don’t want to carry this about. 
[Taking the violin from paviv’s arms. | 


DAVID [Clhinging to it] 
Don’t rob me of my music—it’s all I have. 
165 


MENDEL | 
You'll spoil it in the wet. I'll take it home. 


DAVID 
No 





[He suddenly catches sight of two figures entering 
from the left—Fravu QUIXANO and KATHLEEN Clad 
in their best, and wearing tiny American flags in 
honour of Independence Day. KATHLEEN escorts 
the old lady, with the air of a guardian angel, on 
her slow, tottering course toward DAVID. — FRAU 
QUIXANO 15 puffing and panting after the many 
stairs, DAVID jumps up in surprise, releases the 
violin-casé to MENDEL. | 


They at my symphony! 


MENDEL 
Mother would come—even though, being Shabbos, 
she had to walk. 


DAVID 
But wasn’t she shocked at my playing on the 
Sabbath ? 


MENDEL 

No—that’s the curious part of it. She said that even 
as a boy you played your fiddle on Shabbos, and that 
if the Lord has stood it all these years, He must 
consider you an exception. 


DAVID 


You see! She’s more sensible than you thought. 
166 


I daresay whatever I were to do she’d consider me an 
exception. 


MENDEL [In sullen acquiescence] 


I suppose geniuses are. 


KATHLEEN [Reaching them ; panting with admira- 
tion and breathlessness] 
Oh, Mr. David! it was like midnight mass! But 


i. misthress was ashleep. 


DAVID 
Asleep ! 

RISE ek eat half- sadly. | 
meen tia ! —Ha ! 


FRAU QUIXANO [Panting and laughing in response] 

He! He! He! Dovidel lachtwidder. He! He! He! 
[She touches his arm affectionately, but feeling his 
wet coat, utters a cry of horror.| 

Du bist nass ! 


DAVID 
Es ist gor nicht, Granny—my clothes are thick. 


[She fusses over him, wiping him down with her 
gloved hand.| 


MENDEL 
But what brought you up here, Kathleen ? 


KATHLEEN 
Sure, not the elevator. The misthress said ’twould be 


breaking the Shabbos to ride up in it. 
167 


DAVID [Uneasily] 
But did—did Miss Revendal send you up? 


KATHLEEN 

And who else should be axin’ the misthress if she 
wasn’t proud of Mr. David? Faith, she’s a sweet 
lady. 


MENDEL [Jmpatiently| 
Don’t chatter, Kathleen. 


KATHLEEN 
But, Mr. Quixano 





DAVID [Sweetly] 
Please take your mistress down again—don’t let her 
walk. 


KATHLEEN 
But Shabbos isn’t out yet ! 


MENDEL 
Chattering again! 


DAVID [Gently] 
There’s no harm, Kathleen, in going down in the 
elevator. 


KATHLEEN 

Troth, Pll egshplain to her that droppin’ down isn’t 
ridin’. 

168 


DAVID [Smiling] 
Yes, tell her dropping down is natural—not work, 
like flying up. 
[Kathleen begins to move toward the stairs, explain- 
ing to FRAU QUIXANO. | 
And, Kathleen! You'll get her some refreshments. 


KATHLEEN [Turns, glaring] 
Refrishments, is it? Give her refrishments where 
they mix the mate with the butther plates! Oh, 
Mr. David ! 
[She moves off toward the stairs in reproachful 
sorrow. | 


MENDEL [Smiling] 


Pll get her some coffee. 


DAVID [Smiling] 

Yes, that'll keep her awake. Besides, Pappelmeister 
was so sure the people wouldn’t understand me, he’s 
relaxing them on Gounod and Rossini. 


MENDEL 
Pappelmeister’s idea of relaxation! J should have 
given them comic opera. 
[With sudden call to KATHLEEN, who with her mts- 
tress 1s at the wrong exit.| 
Kathleen! ‘The elevator’s this side! 


KATHLEEN [Turning] 
What way can that bb, when ‘i came up this side? 
169 


MENDEL 
You chatter too much. 

[FRAU QUIXANO, not understanding, exit. | 
Come this way. Can’t you see the elevator ? 


KATHLEEN [Perceives rrau QuixaNno has gone, calls 
after her in Irish-sounding Yiddish] 
Wu geht Ihr, bedad?.. . 
[Lmpatiently | 
Houly Moses, komm’ zurick ! 
[Exit anxiously, re-enter with FRAU QUIXANO. | 
Begorra, we Jews never know our way. 
[MENDEL, carrying the violin, escorts his mother and 
KATHLEEN to the elevator. When they are near 1t, 
12 stops with a thud, and PAPPELMEISTER Springs 
out, his umbrella up, meeting them face to face. He 
looks happy and beaming over vaviv’s triumph. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Jn loud, joyous voice] 
Nun, Frau Quixano, was sagen Sie? Vat you tink 
of your David? 


FRAU QUIXANO 
Dovid ? Er ist meshuggab. 
[She taps her forehead. | 


PAPPELMEISTER [Puzzled, to MENDEL] 
Meshuggah! Vat means meshuggah ? Crazy? 


MENDEL [Half-smiling] 
You’ve struck it. She says David doesn’t know enough 
to go in out of the rain. 

[General laughter. | 


170 


DAVID [Rising] 
But it’s stopped raining, Herr Pappelmeister. You 
don’t want your umbrella. 

[General laughter. | 


PAPPELMEISTER 
0. 
[Shuts it down. | 


MENDEL 

Herein, Mutter. 
[He pushes FRAU QUIXANO’s somewhat shrinking 
form into the elevator. KATHLEEN follows, then 
MENDEL. | 

Herr Pappelmeister, we are all your grateful servants. 
[PAPPELMEISTER bows ; the gates close, the elevator 
descends. | 


DAVID 
And you won’t think me ungrateful for running 
away—you know my thanks are too deep to be 
spoken. 


PAPPLLMEISTER 


And zo are my congratulations ! 


DAVID 
Then, don’t speak them, please. 


PAPPELMEISTER 

But you must come and speak to all de people in 
America who undershtand music. 

171 


DAVID [Half-smiling| 
To your four connoisseurs ? 
[Seriously | 
Oh, please! I really could not meet strangers, 
especially musical vampires. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Half-stariled, half-angry] 
Vampires? Oh, come! 


DAVID 

Voluptuaries, then—rich, idle zsthetes to whom art 
and life have no connection, parasites who suck our 
music 





PAPPELMEISTER [Laughs good-naturedly] 
Ha! Ha! Ha! Vait till you hear vat dey say. 


DAVID 


I will wait as long as you like. 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Den I like to tell you now. 
[He roars with mischievous laughter. ] 
Ha! Ha! Ha! De first vampire says it is a great 
vork, but poorly performed. 


DAVID [Indignant] 
Oh ! 


PAPPELMEISTER 
De second vampire says it is a poor vork, but greatly 


performed. 
172 


DAVID [Disappointed | 
Oh ! 


PAPPELMEISTER 
De dird vampire says it is a great vork greatly per- 
formed. 


DAVID [Complacently] 
Ah! 


PAPPELMEISTER 
And de fourz vampire TN it is a poor vork poorly 
performed. 


DAVID [Angry and disappointed] 
Oh ! 


[Then smiling | 
You see you have to go by the people after all. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Shakes head, smiling| 
Nein. Ven critics disagree—I agree mit mineself. 
HaliHa!l) Ha! 
[He slaps pavip on the back.| 
A great vork dat vill be even better performed next 
time! Ha! Ha!Ha! ‘Ten dousand congratulations. 
[He seizes pavip’s hand and grips it heartily. | 


DAVID 
Don’t! You hurt me. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Dropping vaviv’s hand,—mis- 
[understanding | 

Pardon! I forgot your vound. 

473 


DAVID 

No—no—what does my wound matter? ‘That never 
stung half so much as these clappings and congratu- 
lations. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Puzzled but solicitous| 
I knew your nerves vould be all shnapping like fiddle- 
shtrings. Oh, you cheniuses ! 
[ Smiling. | 
You like neider de clappings nor de criticisms,—was ? 


DAVID 
They are equally—irrelevant. One has to wrestle 
with one’s own art, one’s own soul, alone / 


PAPPELMEISTER [Patting him soothingly| 
I am glad I did not let you blay in Part ‘Two. 


DAVID 

Dear Herr Pappelmeister! Don’t think I don’t appre- 
ciate all your kindnesses—you are almost a father to 
me. 


PAPPELMEISTER 

And you disobey me like a son. Ha! Ha! Ha! 

Vell, I vill make your excuses to de—vampires. Ha! 

Ha! Also, David. 
[He lays his hand again affectionately on DAvID’s 
right shoulder. | 

Lebe wohl! I must go down to my popular classics, 
[ Gloomily | 

Truly a going down! Was? 

174 


DAVID [Smiling] 
Oh, it isn’t such a descent as all that. Uncle said 
you ought to have giver! them comic opera. 


PAPPELMEISTER [Shuddering convulsively| 

Comic opera. . . . Ouf! 
[He goes toward the elevator and rings the bell. 
Then he turns to DavID.| 

Vat vas dat vord, David? 


DAVID 
What word? 


PAPPELMEISTER [Groping for it] 
Mega—megasshu... 


DAVID [Puzzled] 
Megasshu ? 
[The elevator comes up ; the gates open.| 


PAPPELMEISTER 
Megusshab! You know. 
[He taps his forehead with his umbrella. | 


DAVID 
Ah, meshuggah ! 


PAPPELMEISTER [Foyously ] 
Fa, meshuggah ! 
[He gives a great roar of laughter.| 
miata.) Ha ! 
[He waves umbrella at Davip.| 
175 


Well, don’t be . . . meshuggah. 
[He steps into the elevator. | 
Ha! Hail Hail 
[The gates close, and it descends with his laughter.| 


DAVID [4 fier a pause] 
Perhaps | am... meshuggah. 

[He walks up and down moodily, approaches the 

parapet at back. | 
Dropping down is indeed natural. 

| He looks over. | 
How it tugs and drags at one! 

[He moves back resolutely and shakes his head.| 
That would be even a greater descent than Pappel- 
meister’s to comic opera. One must fly upward— 
somehow. 

[He drops on the chair that MENDEL dried. A faint 

music steals up and makes an accompaniment to 

all the rest of the scene. | 
Ah! the popular classics ! 

[His head sinks on a little table. The elevator 

comes up again, but he does not raise his head. 

VERA, pale and sad, steps out and walks gently over 

to him ; stands looking at him with maternal pity ; 

then decides not to disturb him and 1s stealing away 
when suddenly he looks up and perceives her and 
springs to his feet with a dazed glad cry.| 

Vera ! 


VERA [Turns, speaks with grave dignity] 
Miss Andrews has charged me to convey to you the 


heart-felt thanks and congratulations of the Settlement. 
176 3 


DAVID [Frozen] 


Miss Andrews 's very kind. . . . I trust you are well. 


VERA 
Thank you, Mr. Quixano. Very well and very busy. 
So you'll excuse me. 

[She turns to go.| 


DAVID 
Certainly. . . . How are your folks? 


VERA [Turns her head] - 
They are gone back to Russia. And yours ? 


DAVID 


You just saw them all. 


VERA [Confused] 
Yes—yes—of course—I forgot! Good-bye, Mr. 
Quixano. 


DAVID 

Good-bye, Miss Revendal. 
[He drops back on the chair. vera walks to the 
elevator, then just before ringing turns again.| 


VERA 
I shouldn’t advise you to sit here in the damp. 


DAVID 
My uncle dried the chair. 
[Bizterly | 
177 M 


Curious how every one is concerned about my body 
and no one about my soul. 


VERA 

Because your soul is so much stronger than your 
body. Why, think! It has just lifted a thousand 
people far higher than this roof-garden. 


DAVID 


Please don’t you congratulate me, too! ‘That would 
be too ironical. 


VERA [Agitated, coming nearer] 
Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine 
there is any irony in my congratulations. 


DAVID 

The irony is in all the congratulations. How can 
I endure them when I know what a terrible failure 
I have made! 


VERA 

Failure! Because the critics are all divided? ‘That 
is the surest proof of success. You have produced 
something real and new. 


DAVID 

1 am not thinking of Pappelmeister’s connoisseurs 
—J am the only connoisseur, the only one who knows. 
And every bar of my music cried “ Failure! Failure!” 
lt shrieked from the violins, blared from the trombones, 
thundered from the drums. It was written on all 
the faces 
178 





VERA [Vehemently, coming still nearer| 

Oh, no! no! I watched the faces—those faces of 
toil and sorrow, those faces from many lands. ‘They 
were fired by your vision of their coming brotherhood, 
lulled by your dream of their land of rest. And [ 
could see that you were right in speaking to the 
people. In some strange, beautiful way the inner 
meaning of your music stole into all those simple 
souls 





DAVID [Springing up] 

And my soul? What of my soul? False to its own 
music, its own mission, its own dream. ‘That is what 
I mean by failure, Vera. I preached of God’s Crucible, 
this great new continent that could melt up all race- 
differences and vendettas, that could purge and 
re-create, and God tried me with his supremest test. 
He gave me a heritage from the Old World, hate and 
vengeance and blood, and said, “* Cast it all into my 
Crucible.” And I said, ‘‘ Even thy Crucible cannot 
melt this hate, cannot drink up this blood.” And 
so I sat crooning over the dead past, gloating over 
the old blood-stains—I, the apostle of America, the 
prophet of the God of our children. Oh—how my 
music mocked me! And you—so fearless, so high 
above fate—how you must despise me! 


VERA 
PrAh no! 


DAVID 
You must. You do. Your words still sting. Were 
179 


it seven seas between us, you said, our love must 
cross them. And I—I who had prated of seven 
seas 





VERA 
Not seas of blood—lI spoke selfishly, thoughtiessly. 
I had not realised that crimson flood. Now ! see it 
day and night. O God! 

[She shudders and covers her eyes.| 


DAVID 
There lies my failure—to have brought it to your 
eyes, instead of blotting it from my own. 


VERA 
No man could have blotted it out. 


DAVID 

Yes—by faith in the Crucible. From the blood of 
battlefields spring daisies and buttercups. In the 
divine chemistry the very garbage turns to roses. 
But in the supreme moment my faith was found 


wanting, You came to me—and I thrust you 
away. . 


VERA 
I ought not to have come to you. .. . I ought not 


to have come to you to-day. We must not meet 
again. 


DAVID 


Ah, you cannot forgive me! 
180 


VERA 
Forgive ? It is I that should go down on my knees 
for my father’s sin. 

[She 15 half-sinking to her knees. He stops her by 


a gesture and a cry.| 


DAVID 
No! The sins of the fathers shall not be visited on 
the children. 


VERA 

My brain follows you, but not my heart. It is heavy 
with the sense of unpaid debts—debts that can only 
cry for forgiveness. 


DAVID 


You owe me nothing—— 


VERA 

But my father, my people, my country. ... 
[She breaks down. Recovers herself.| 

My only consolation is, you need nothing. 


DAVID [Dazed] 
I—need—nothing ? 


VERA 


Nothing but your music . . . your dreams. 


DAVID 
And your love? Do I not need that? 
181 


VERA [Shaking her head sadly | 
No. 


DAVID 
You say that because I have forfeited it. 


VERA 

It is my only consolation, I tell you, that you do not 
need me. In our happiest moments a suspicion of 
this truth used to lacerate me. But now it is my 
one comfort in the doom that divides us. See how 
you stand up here above the world, alone and self- 
sufficient. No woman could ever have more than the 
second place in your life. 


DAVID 
But you have the first place, Vera ! 


VERA [Shakes her head again] 
No—TI no longer even desire it. I have gotten over 
that womanly weakness. 


DAVID 


You torture me. What do you mean? 


VERA 

What can be simpler? I used to be jealous of your 
music, your prophetic visions. I wanted to come first 
—before them all! Now, dear David, I only pray 
that they may fill your life to the brim. 


DAVID 


But they cannot. 
182 


VERA 
They will—have faith in yourself, in your mission— 
good-bye. 


DAVID [Dazed] 


You love me and you leave me? 


VERA 

What else can I do? Shall the shadow of Kishineff 
hang over all your years to come? Shall I kiss you 
and leave blood upon your lips, cling to you and be 
pushed away by all those cold, dead hands? 


DAVID [Taking both her hands] 

Yes, cling to me, despite them all, cling to me till all 
these ghosts are exorcised, cling to me till our love 
triumphs over death. Kiss me, kiss me now. 


VERA [Resisting, drawing back] 


I dare not! It will make you remember. 


DAVID 
It will make me forget. Kiss me. 
[There 1s a pause of hesitation, filled up by the 


Cathedral music from “ Faust” surging up softly 
from below. | 


VERA [Slozly] 
I will kiss you as we Russians kiss at Easter—the three 
kisses of peace. 

[She kisses him three times on the mouth as in 


ritual solemnity. | 
183 


DAVID [Very calmly] 
Easter was the date of the massacre—see! I am at 
peace. 


VERA 

God grant it endure ! 
[They stand quietly hand in hand.] 

Look! How beautiful the sunset is after the storm ! 

DAVID turns. The sunset, which has begun to grow 

beautiful just after VERA’S entrance, has now reached 
its most magnificent moment; below there are 
narrow lines of saffron and pale gold, but above the 
whole sky 1s one glory of burning flame. | 


DAVID [Prophetically exalted by the spectacle] 
It is the fires of God round His Crucible. 

[He drops her hand and points downward. | 
There she lies, the great Melting Pot—listen! Can’t 
you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There 
gapes her mouth 

[He points east] 
—the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders 
come from the ends of the world to pour in their 
human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! 
Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, 
—black and yellow 





VERA [Softly, nestling to him] 
Jew and Gentile 





DAVID 


Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm 
184 


and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent 
and the cross—how the great Alchemist melts and 
fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they 
all unite to build the Republic of Man and the King- 
dom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome 
and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to 
worship and look back, compared with the glory of 
America, where all races and nations come to labour 
and look forward ! 
[He ratses his hands 1n benediction over the shining 
city. 
Peace, ae to all ye unborn millions, fated to fill 
this giant continent—the God of our children give 
you Peace. 
[An instant’s solemn pause. The sunset 1s swiftly 
fading, and the vast panorama 1s suffused with a 
more restful twilight, to which the many-gleaming 
lights of the town add the tender poetry of the night. 
Far back, like a lonely, guiding star, twinkles over 
the darkening water the torch of the Statue of 
Liberty. From below comes up the softened sound 
of voices and instruments joining in ““ My Country, 


’tis of Thee.” The curtain falls slowly. | 


185 





HULA Fy eg 
KAY 
' 























# a3 * 
) u 
MARA 
ne 
Ne ALA 






THE MELTING POT IN ACTION 


APPENDIX A 


ALIENS ADMITTED TO THE UNITED STATES IN THE YEAR 


African (black) 

Armenian . 

Bee stitanand Mo- 
ravian 

Bulgarian, Berviah, 
Montenegrin 

Chinese 

Croatian and St, 
vonian 

Cuban : 

Dalmatian, Bos- 
nian, Herzegovi- 
nian 

Dutch and Bicinish 

East Indian 

English 

Finnish 

French 

German 

Greek 

Hebrew 

Irish . 

Italian (north) 

Italian (south) 


Carried forward 
187 





ENDED JUNE 


9,734 
9,554 


11,852 


10,083 
3.487 


44,754 
6,121 


4,775 
18,746 
233 
100,062 
14,920 
26,509 
101,764 
409,933 
105,826 
48,103 
54,171 
264,348 


875,975 


30TH, 1913 


Brought forward 


Japanese 

Korean 

Lithuanian . 

Magyar 

Mexican 

Paciac Islander . 

Polish 

Portuguese . 

Roumanian 

Russian 

Ruthenian (Russ- 
niak) 

Scandinavian 

Scotch 

Slovak 

Spanish 

Spanish- -American 

Syrian 

Turkish 

Welsh 

West Indian (ex- 
cept Cuban) 

Other peoples 


Total . 


875,975 
11,672 


31,434 
29,094 
15,017 
3,409 
10,019 
2,132 
3,922 


2.22 
Wy 


1,427,227 


APPENDIX B 
THE POGROM 


(I) A RUSSIAN ON ITS REASONS 
[From The Nation, November 15, 1913] 


Ir is now over thirty years since the crew of the sinking ship 
of Russian absolutism first tried this unworthy weapon to save 
their failing cause. ‘This was when Plehve organised an anti- 
Semitic agitation and Jewish pogroms in 1883 in South Russia, 
where the Jews formed almost the only merchant class in the 
villages, and where the ignorant peasants, together with some 
crafty Russian tradesmen, had a natural grudge against them. 
The result was that the prevailing discontent of the masses 
was diverted against the Jews. A large public meeting of 
protest was organised at that time in the London Mansion 
House, the Lord Mayor taking the chair. English public 
opinion rightly appreciated the value of this criminal method 
of using Jews as scapegoats for political purposes. Now we see 
merely a further, and let us hope a final, development of the 
same tactics. ‘They have been used on many occasions since 
1883. One of the largest Jewish pogroms of the latest series 
in Kishineff in 1903 has been clearly traced to the same expe- 
rienced hand of Plehve, when the passive attitude of the local 
administration and the military was explained by the presence 
in the town of a mysterious colonel of the Imperial Gentian 
who arrived with secret orders and a large supply of pogrom 
literature from St. Petersburg, and who organised the scum of 
the town population for the purpose of looting and killing 
Jews. 

The repulsive stories of further pogroms all over the country 
- immediately after the issue of the constitutional manifesto of 
188 


October 17, 1905, are fresh in the memory of the civilised world. 
At that time anti-Semitic doctrine was openly preached, not 
only against Jews, but against the whole constitutional and 
revolutionary upheaval. Pogroms against both were organised 
under the same pretext of saving the Tsar, the orthodoxy, and 
the Fatherland. Local police and military officials had secret 
orders to abstain from interference with the looting and mur- 
dering of Jews or “their hirelings.”” Processions of peaceful 
citizens and children were trampled down by the Cossack 
horses, and the Cossacks received formal thanks from high 
quarters for their excellent exploits... . 


N. W. TcHaykovsky. 


(II) A NURSE ON ITS RESULTS 


[From Public Health, Nurses’ Quarterly, Cleveland, Ohio, 
October 1913] 


I was a Red Cross nurse on the battlefield. 

The words of the chief doctor of the Jewish Hospital of 
Odessa still ring in my ears. When the telephone message 
came, he said, ‘‘ Moldvanko is running in blood; send nurses 
and doctors.” ‘This meant that the Pogrom (massacre) was 
going on. 

haa came into the wards with these words: “‘ Sisters, 
there is no time for weeping. ‘Those who have no one depen- 
dent upon them, come. Put on your white surgical gowns, 
and the red cross. Make ready to go on the battlefield at 
once. God knows how many of our sisters and brothers are 
already killed.”” ‘Tears were just running down his cheeks as 
he spoke. In a minute twelve nurses and eight doctors had 
volunteered. ‘There was one Red Cross nurse who was in bed 
waiting to be operated on. She got up and made ready too. 
Nobody could keep her from going with us. ‘‘ Where my 
sisters and brothers fall, there shall I fall,” she said, and with 
these words, jumped into the ambulance and went on to the 
City Hospital with us. ‘There they had better equipment, and 

189 





they sent out three times as many nurses as the Jewish Hospital. 
At the City Hospital they hung silver crosses about our necks. 
We wore the silver crosses so that we would not be recognised 
as Jewish by the Holiganes (Hooligans). 

Then we went to Molorosiskia Street in the Moldvanko 
(slums). We could not see, for the feathers were flying like 
snow. ‘The blood was already up to our ankles on the pave- 
ment and in the yards. ‘The uproar was deafening but we 
could hear the Holiganes’ fierce cries of ‘‘ Hooray, kill the 
Jews,” on all sides. It was enough to hear such words. ‘They 
could turn your hair grey, but we went on. We had no time 
to think. All our thoughts were to pick up wounded ones, and 
to try to rescue some uninjured ones. We succeeded in 
rescuing some uninjured who were in hiding. We put ban- 
dages on them to make it appear that they were wounded. 
We put them in the ambulance and carried them to the 
hospital, too. So at the Jewish Hospital we had five thousand 
injured and seven thousand uninjured to feed and protect for 
two weeks. Some were left without homes, without clothes, 
and children were even without parents. 

My dear reader, I want to tell you one thing before I describe 
the scenes of the massacre any further; do not think that 
you are reading a story which could not happen! No, I want 
you to know that everything you read is just exactly as it 
was. My hair is a little grey, but I am surprised it is not 
quite white after what I witnessed. 

The procession of the Pogrom was led by about ten Catholic 
(Greek) Sisters with about forty or fifty of their school children. 
They carried ikons or pictures of Jesus and sang ‘‘ God Save 
the Tsar.” They were followed by a crowd containing hun- 
dreds of men and women murderers yelling ‘‘ Bey Zhida,” 
which means ‘ Kill the Jews.” With these words they ran 
into the yards where there were fifty or a hundred tenants. 
They rushed in like tigers. Soon they began to throw children 
out of the windows of the second, third, and fourth stories. 
They would take a poor, innocent six-months-old baby, who 
could not possibly have done any harm in this world and 
190 


throw it down on to the pavement. You can imagine it could 
not live after it struck the ground, but this did not satisfy the 
stony-hearted murderers. ‘They then rushed up to the child, 
seized it and broke its little arm and leg bones into three or 
four pieces, then wrung its neck too. They laughed and 
yelled, so carried away with pleasure at their successful work. 


I do wish a few Americans could have been there to see, 
and they would know what America is, and what it means to 
live in the United States. It wa: not enough for them to open 
up a woman’s abdomen and take out the child which she 
carried, but they took time to stuff the abdomen with straw 
and fillit up. Can you imagine human beings able to do such 
things? I do not think anybody could, because I could not 
imagine it myself when a few years before I read the news of 
the massacre in Kishineff, but now I have seen it with my 
own eyes. It was not enough for them to cut out an old 
man’s tongue and cut off his nose, but they drove nails into 
the eyes also. You wonder how they had enough time to 
carry away everything of value—money, gold, silver, jewels— 
and still be able to do so much fanc; killing, but oh, my friends, 
all the time for three days and three nights was theirs. 

The last day and nigh it poured down rain, and you would 
think that might stop them, but no, they worked just as hard 
as ever. We could wear shoes no longer. Our feet were 
swollen, so we wore rubbers over our stockings, and in this 
way worked until some power was able to stop these horrors. 
They not only killed, but they had time to abuse young girls 
of twelve and fourteen years of age, who died immediately 
after being operated upon. 

I remember what happened to my own class-mates. ‘They 
were two who came from a small town to Odessa to become 
midwives. These girls ran to the school to hide themselves 
as it was a government school, and they knew the Holiganes 
would not dare to come in there. But the dean of the school 
had ordered they should not be admitted, because they were 
Jewish, as if they had different blood running in their veins. 
193 


So when they came, the watchman refused to open the doors, 
according to his instructions. ‘The crowd of Holiganes found 
them outside the doors of the hospital. They abused them 
right there in the middle of the street. One was eighteen 
years old and the other was twenty. One died after the 
operation and the other went insane from shame. 

Some people ask why the Jews did not leave everything and 
go away. But how could they go and where could they go? 
The murderers were scattered throughout the Jewish quatters. 
All they could do was hide where they were in the cellars and 
garrets. The Holiganes searched them out and killed them 
where they were hidden. Others may ask, why did they not 
resist the murderers with their knivesand pistols? Thegrown 
men organised by the second day. ‘They were helped by the 
Vigilantes, too, who brought them arms. The Vigilantes 
were composed of students at the University and high-school 
boys, and also the strongest man from each Jewish family. 
There were a good many Gentiles among the students who 
belonged to the Vigilantes because they wanted justice. So 
on the second day the Vigilantes stood before the doors and 
gave resistance to the murderers. Some will ask where were 
the soldiers and the police? ‘They were sent to protect, 
but on arriving, joined in with the murderers. However, the 
police put disguises on over their uniforms. Later, when 
they were brought to the hospital with other wounded, we 
found their uniforms underneath their disguises. 

When the Vigilantes took their stations, the scene was like a 
battlefield. Bullets were flying from both sides of the Red 
Cross carriages: We expected to be killed any minute, but 
notwithstanding, we rushed wherever there were shots heard 
in order to carry away the wounded. Whenever we arrived 
we shouted “‘ Red Cross, Red Cross,” in order to help make 
them realise we were not Vigilantes. Then they would stop 
and let us pick up the wounded. They did this on account 
of their own wounded. 

The Vigilantes could not stop the butchery entirely because 
they were not strong enough in numbers. On the fourth day, 
192 


the Jewish people of Odessa, through Dr. P , succeeded in 
communicating to the Mayor of a different State. Soldiers 
from outside, strangers to the murderers, came in and took 
charge of the city. The city was put under martial law until 
order could be restored. 

On the fifth day the doctors and nurses were called to the 
cemetery, where there were four hundred unidentified dead. 
Their friends and relatives who came to search for them were 
crazed and hysterical and needed our attention. Wives came 
to look for husbands, parents hunting children, a mother for 
her only son, and so on. It took eight days to identify the 
bodies and by that time four hundred of the wounded had 
died, and so we had eight hundred to bury. If you visit Odessa, 
you will be shown two long graves, about one hundred feet 
long, beside the Jewish Cemetery. ‘There lie the victims of 
the massacre. Among them are Gentile Vigilantes whose 
parents asked that they be buried with the Jews... . 

Another case I knew was that of a married man. He left 
his wife, who was pregnant, and three children, to go on a 
business trip. When he got back the massacre had occurred. 
His home was in ruins, his family gone. He went to the 
hospital, then to the cemetery. There he found his wife with 
her abdomen stuffed with straw, and his three children dead. 
It simply broke his heart, and he lost his mind. But he was 
harmless, and was to be seen wandering about the hospital as 
though in search of some one, and daily he grew more thin 
and suffering. 

This story is told in the hope that Americans will appreciate 
the safety and freedom in which they live and that they will 
help others to gain that freedom. 





APPENDIX..C 
THE STORY OF DANIEL MELSA 


ANOTHER example of Nature aping Art is afforded by the 
romantic story of Daniel Melsa, a young Russo-Jewish violinist 
who has carried audiences by storm in Berlin, Paris and London, 

and who had arranged to go to America last November. The 
following extract from an interview in the Fewish Chronicle 
of January 24, 1913, shows the curious coincidence between 
his beginnings and David Quixano’s : | 

‘““Melsa is not yet twenty years of age, but he looks some- 
what older. He is of slight build and has a sad expression, 
which increased to almost a painful degree when recounting 
some of his past experiences. He seems singularly devoid of 
any affectation, while modesty is obviously the keynote of 
his nature. 

‘“ After some persuasion, Melsa put aside his reticence, and, 
complying with the request, outlined briefly his career, the 
early part of which, he said, was overshadowed by a great 
tragedy. He was born in Warsaw, and, at the age of three, 
his parents moved to Lodz, where shortly after a private tutor 
was engaged for him. 

‘“““ Although I exhibited a passion for music quite early, I 
did not receive any lessons on the subject till my seventh birth- 
day, but before that my father obtained a cheap violin for me 
upon which I was soon able to play simple melodies by ear.’ 

‘““ By chance a well-known professor of the town heard him 
play, and so impressed was he with the talent exhibited by 
the boy that he advised the father to have him educated. 
Acting upon this advice, as far as limited means allowed, tutors 
were engaged, and so much progress did he make that at the 
age of nine he was admitted to the local Conservatorium of 


194 


Professor Grudzinski, where he remained two years. It was 
at the age of eleven that a great calamity overtook the family, 
his father and sister falling victims to the pogroms. 

“‘Melsa’s story runs as follows : 

““ Tt was in June of 1905, at the time of the pogroms, when 
one afternoon my father, accompanied by my little sister, 
ventured out into the street, from which they never returned. 
They were both killed,’ he added sadly, ‘by Cossacks. A 
week later I found my sister in a Christian churchyard riddled 
with bullets, but I have not been able to trace the remains of 
my father, who must have been buried in some out-of-the-way 
place. During this awful period my mother and myselt lived 
in imminent danger of our lives, and it was only the recollection 
of my playing that saved us also falling a prey to the vodka- 
besodden Cossacks.’ ”” 


APPENDIX D 
BEILIS AND AMERICA 


Tue close relation in Jewish thought between Russo-Jewish 
persecution and America as the land of escape from it is well 
illustrated by the recent remarks of the Few1sh Chronicle on 
the future of the victim of the Blood-Ritual Prosecution in 
Kieff. ‘‘ So long as Beilis continues to live in Russia, his life 
is unsafe. ‘The Black Hundreds, he himself says, have solemnly 
decided on his death, and we have seen, in the not distant past, 
that they can carry out diabolical plots of this description with 
complete immunity. .. . He would gladly go to America, 
provided he was sure of a living. The condition should not 
be difficult to fulfil, and if this victim of a barbarous régime— 
we cannot say latest victim, for, as we write, comes the news 
of an expulsion order against 1200 Jewish students of Kieff— 
should find a home and place under the sheltering wing: of 
freedom, it would be a fitting ending to a painful chapter in 
our Jewish history.” 

That it is the natural ending even the Jew-baiting Russian 
organ, the Novoe Vremya, indirectly testifies, for it has published 
a sneering cartoon representing a number of Jews crowded on 
the Statue of Liberty to welcome the arrival of Beilis. One 
wonders that the Russian censor should have permitted the 
masses to become aware that Liberty exists on earth, if only in 
the form of a statue. 


196 


APPENDIX E 
THE ALIEN IN THE MELTING POT 


Mr. Freperick J. Haskin has recently published in the Chicago 
Daily News the following graphic summary of what immigrants 
have done and do for the United States : 

I am the immigrant. 

Since the dawn of creation my restless feet have beaten new 
paths across the earth. 

My uneasy bark has tossed on all seas. 

My wanderlust was born of the craving for more liberty and 
a better wage for the sweat of my face. 

I looked towards the United States with eyes kindled by the 
fire of ambition and heart quickened with new-born hope. 

I approached its gates with great expectation. 

I entered in with fine hopes. 

I have shouldered my burden as the American man of all 
work. 

I contribute eighty-five per cent. of all the labour in the 
slaughtering and meat-packing industries. 

I do seven-tenths of the bituminous coal mining. 

I do seventy-eight per cent. of all the work in the woollen 
mills. 

I contribute nine-tenths of all the labour in the cotton mills. 

I make nine-twentieths of all the clothing. 

I manufacture more than half the shoes. 

I build four-fifths of all the furniture. 

I make half of the collars, cuffs, and shirts. 

I turn out four-fifths of all the leather. 

I make half the gloves. 

I refine nearly nineteen-twentieths of the sugar. 

I make half of the tobacco and cigars. 


197 


And yet, I am the great American problem. 

When I pour out my blood on your altar of labour, and lay 
down my life as a sacrifice to your god of toil, men make no 
more comment than at the fall of a sparrow. 

But my brawn is woven into the warp and woof of the 
fabric of your national being. 

My children shall be your children and your land shall be 
my land because my sweat and my blood will cement the 
foundations of the America of 'To-Morrow. 

If I can be fused into the body politic, the Melting-Pot will 
have stood the supreme test. 


198 


Afterword 
I 


The Melting Pot is the third of the writer’s plays to 
be published in book form, though the first of the 
three in order of composition. But unlike The War 
God and The Next Religion, which are dramatisations 
of the spiritual duels of our time, The Melting Pot 
sprang directly from the author’s concrete experience 
as President of the Emigration Regulation Department 
of the Jewish Territorial Organisation, which, founded 
shortly after the great massacres of Jews in Russia, 
will soon have fostered the settlement of ten thousand 
Russian Jews in the West of the United States. 

** Romantic claptrap,” wrote Mr. A. B. Walkley 
in the Zimes of “this rhapsodising over music and 
crucibles and statues of Liberty.” As if these things 
were not the homeliest of realities, and rhapsodising 
the natural response to them of the Russo-Jewish psy- 
chology, incurably optimist. The statue of Liberty is 
a large visible object at the mouth of New York har- 
bour ; the crucible, if visible only to the eye of 1 imagina- 
tion like the inner reality of the sunrise to the eye of 
Blake, is none the less a roaring and flaming actuality. 
These things are as substantial, if not as important, as 
Adeline Genée and Anna Pavlova, the objects of 
Mr. Walkley’s own rhapsodising. Mr. Walkley, never 
having lacked Liberty, nor cowered for days in a cellar 
in terror of a howling mob, can see only theatrical 
exaggeration in the enthusiasm for a land of freedom, 
just as, never having known or never having had eyes 
to see the grotesque and tragic creatures existing all 
179 


around us, he has doubted the reality of some of 
Balzac’s creations. It is to be feared that for such 
a play as The Melting Pot Mr. Walkley is far from 
being the yapées of Aristotle. ‘The ideal spectator 
must have known and felt more of life than Mr. 
Walkley, who resembles too much the library-fed 
man of letters whose denunciation by Walter Bagehot 
he himself quotes without suspecting de te fabula 
narratur. Even the critic, who has to deal with a 
refracted world, cannot dispense with primary expe- 
rience of his own. For “the adventures of a soul 
among masterpieces” it is not only necessary there 
should be masterpieces, there must also be a soul. 
Mr. Walkley, one of the wittiest of contemporary 
writers and within his urban range one of the wisest, 
can scarcely be accused of lacking a soul, though 
Mr. Bernard Shaw’s long-enduring misconception of 
him as a brother in the spirit is one of the comedies of 
literature. But such spiritual vitality as Oxford failed 
to sterilise in him has been largely torpified by his 
profession of play-taster, with its divorcement from 
reality in the raw. His cry of ‘‘ romantic claptrap ” 
is merely the reaction of the club armchair to the 
‘“‘ drums and tramplings ” of the street. It is in fact 
(he will welcome an allusion to Dickens almost as 
much as one to Aristotle) the higher Podsnappery. 
“Thus happily acquainted with his own merit and 
importance, Mr. Podsnap settled that whatever he 
put behind him he put out of existence. ... The 
world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter past, 
breakfasted at nine, went to the City at ten, came 


home at half-past five, and dined at seven.” 
200 


Mr. Roosevelt, with his multifarious American 
experience as soldier and cowboy, hunter and historian, 
police-captain and President, comes far nearer the ideal 
spectator, for this play at least, than Mr. Walkley. Yet 
his enthusiasm for it has been dismissed by our critic 
as “‘ stupendous naiveté.”” Mr. Roosevelt apparently 
falls under that class of “ people who knowing no 
rules, are at the mercy of their undisciplined taste,’ 
which Mr. Walkley excludes altogether from his classi- 
fication of critics, in despite of Dr. Johnson’s opinion 
that “ natural judges ”’ are only second to ‘* those who 
know but are above the rules.” It is comforting, 
therefore, to find Mr. Augustus ‘Thomas, the famous 
American playwright, who is familiar with the rules 
to the point of contempt, chivalrously associating 
himself, in defence of a British rival, with Mr. Roose- 
velt’s “stupendous naiveté.”’ 

“Mr. Zangwill’s ‘ rhapsodising’ over music and 
crucibles and statues of Liberty is,’’ says Mr. Thomas, 
‘a very effective use of a most potent symbolism, 
and I have never seen men and women more sincerely 
stirred than the audience at The Melting Pot. ‘The 
impulses awakened by the Zangwill play were those 
of wide human sympathy, charity, and compassion ; 
and, for my own part, I would rather retire from the 
theatre and retire from all direct or indirect associa- 
tion with journalism than write down the employment 
of these factors by Mr. Zangwill as mere claptrap.”’ 

** As a work of art for art’s sake,” also wrote Mr. 
William Archer, “the play simply does not exist.” 
He added: “but Mr. Zangwill would not dream of 
appealing to such a standard.” Mr. Archer had the 


201 


misfortune to see the play in New York side by side 
with his more cynical confrére, and thus his very 
praise has an air of apologia to Mr. Walkley and the 
great doctrine of “‘art for art’s sake.” It would 
almost seem as if he even takes a “‘ work of art ” and 
a *‘ work of art for art’s sake ”’ as synonymous. Nothing, 
in fact, could be more inartistic. ‘* Art for art’s sake ” 
is one species of art, whose right to existence the 
author has amply recognised in other works. (The 
King of Schnorrers was even read aloud by Oscar Wilde 
to a duchess.) But he roundly denies that art is any 
the less artistic for being inspired by life, and seeking 
in its turn to inspire life. Such a contention is tainted 
by the very Philistinism it would repudiate, since it 
seeks a negative test of art in something outside art— 
to wit, purpose, whose presence is surely as irrelevant 
to art as its absence. The only test of art is artistic 
quality, and this quality occurs perhaps more frequently 
than it is achieved, as in the words of the Hebrew 
prophets, or the vision of a slum at night, the former 
consciously aiming at something quite different, the 
latter achieving its beauty in utter unconsciousness. 


Il 


It will be seen from the official table of immigration 
that the Russian Jew is only one and not even the 
largest of the fifty elements that, to the tune of nearly 
a million and a half a year, are being fused in the 
greatest “‘ Melting Pot”? the world has ever known ; 
but if he has been selected as the typical immigrant, 
it is because he alone of all the fifty has no home- 
202 


land. Some few other races, such as the Armenians, 
are almost equally devoid of political power, and, in 
consequence, equally obnoxious to massacre; but 
except the gipsy, whose essence is to be homeless, there 
is no other race—black, white, red, or yellow—that has 
not remained at least a majority of the population 
in some area of its own. ‘There is none, therefore, 
more in need of a land of liberty, none to whose future 
it is more vital that America should preserve that 
spirit of William Penn which President Wilson has 
so nobly characterised. And there is assuredly none 
which has more valuable elements to contribute to 
the ethnic and psychical amalgam of the people of 
to-morrow. 

The process of American amalgamation is not 
assimilation or simple surrender to the dominant type, 
as is popularly supposed, but an all-round give-and- 
take by which the final type may be enriched or 
impoverished. ‘Thus the intelligent reader will have 
remarked how the somewhat anti-Semitic Irish servant 
of the first act talks Yiddish herself in the fourth. 
Even as to the ultimate language of the United States, 
it is unreasonable to suppose that American, though 
fortunately protected by English literature, will not 
bear traces of the fifty languages now, being spoken 
side by side with it, and of which this play alone 
presents scraps in German, French, Russian, Yiddish, 
Irish, Hebrew, and Italian. 

That in the crucible of love, or even co-citizenship, 
the most violent antitheses of the past may be fused 
into a higher unity is a truth of both ethics and 


observation, and it was in order to present historic 
203 





enmities at their extremes that the persecuted Jew 
of Russia and the persecuting Russian race have been 
taken for protagonists— the fell incenséd points of 
mighty opposites.” 

The Jewish immigrant is, moreover, the toughest 
of all the white elements that have been poured into 
the American crucible, the race having, by its unique 
experience of several thousand years of exposure to 
alien majorities, developed a salamandrine power of 
survival. And this asbestoid fibre is made even more 
fireproof by the anti-Semitism of American uncivilisa- 
tion. Nevertheless, to suppose that America will 
remain permanently afflicted by all the old European 
diseases would be to despair of humanity, not to 
mention super-humanity. 


Ill 


Even the negrophobia is not likely to remain eternally 
at its present barbarous pitch. Mr. William Archer, 
who has won a new fame as student of that black 
problem, which is America’s nemesis for her ancient 
slave-raiding, and who favours the creation of a Black 
State as one of the United States, observes: ‘‘ It is 
noteworthy that neither David Quixano nor anyone 
else in the play makes the slightest reference to that 
inconvenient element in the crucible of God—the 
negro.” ‘This is an oversight of Mr. Archer’s, for 
Baron Revendal defends the Jew-baiting of Russia by 
asking of an American: ‘“‘ Don’t you lynch and roast 
your niggers ?”? And David Quixano expressly throws 


both “black and yellow” into the crucible. No 
204. 


doubt there is an instinctive antipathy which tends 
to keep the white man free from black blood, though 
this antipathy having been overcome by a large 
minority in all the many periods and all the many 
countries of their contiguity, it is equally certain that 
there are at work forces of attraction as well as of 
repulsion, and that even upon the negro the “ Melting 
Pot” of America will not fail to act in a measure as 
it has acted on the Red Indian, who has found it 
almost as facile to mate with his white neighbours as 
with his black. Indeed, it is as much social prejudice 
as racial antipathy that to-day divides black and white 
in the New World; and Sir Sydney Olivier has recorded 
that in Jamaica the white is far more on his guard and 
his dignity against the half-white than against the 
all-black, while in Guiana, according to Sir Harry 
Johnston in his great work “‘ ‘The Negro in the New 
World,” it is the half-white that, in his turn, despises 
the black and succeeds in marrying still further white- 
wards. It might have been thought that the dark- 
white races on the northern shore of the Mediterranean 
—the Spaniards, Sicilians, &c.—who have already been 
crossed with the sons of Ham from its southern shore, 
would, among the American immigrants, be the natural 
links towards the fusion of white and black, but a 
similar instinct of pride and peril seems to hold them 
back. But whether the antipathy in America be a 
race instinct or a social prejudice, the accusations 
against the black are largely panic-born myths, for 
the alleged repulsive smell of the negro is consistent 
with being shaved by him, and the immorality of the 
negress is consistent with her control of the nurseries 
205 


of the South. The devil is not so black nor the black 
so devilish as he is painted. ‘This is not to deny that 
the prognathous face is an ugly and undesirable type 
of countenance or that it connotes a lower average of 
intellect and ethics, or that white and black are as 
yet too far apart for profitable fusion. Melanophobia, 
or fear of the black, may be pragmatically as valuable a 
racial defence for the white as the counter-instinct of 
philoleucosis, or love of the white, is a force of racial 
uplifting for the black. But neither colour has suc- 
ceeded in monopolising all the virtues and graces in its 
specific evolution from the common ancestral ape, and 
a superficial acquaintance with the work of Dr. Arthur 
Keith teaches that if the black man is nearer the ape 
in some ways (having even the remains of throat- 
pouches), the white man is nearer in other ways (as 
in his greater hairiness). 

And besides being, as Sir Sydney Olivier says, ‘a 
matrix of emotional and spiritual energies that have 
yet to find their human expression,” the African 
negro has obviously already not a few valuable ethnic 
elements—joy of life, love of colour, keen senses, 
beautiful voice, and ear for music—contributions that 
might somewhat compensate for the dragging-down 
of the white and, in small doses at least, might one 
day prove a tonic to an anemic and art-less America. 
A musician like Coleridge-Taylor is no despicable 
product of the ‘‘ Melting Pot,” while the negroes of 
genius whom the writer has been privileged to know— 
men like Henry O. Tanner, the painter, and Paul 
Laurence Dunbar, the poet—show the potentialities 


of the race even without white admixture; and as 
206 | 


men of this stamp are capable of attracting cultured 
white wives, the fusing process, beginning at the top 
with types like these, should be far less unwelcome 
than that which starts with the dregs of both races. 
But the negroid hair and complexion being, in Men- 
delian language, ‘‘dominant,”’ these black traits are 
not easy to eliminate from the hybrid posterity ; and 
in view of all the unpleasantness, both immediate and 
contingent, that attends the blending of colours, only 
heroic souls on either side should dare the adventure 
of intermarriage. Blacks of this temper, however, 
would serve their race better by making Liberia a 
success or building up an American negro State, as 
Mr. William Archer recommends, or at least asserting 
their rights as American citizens in that sub-tropical 
South which without their labour could never have 
been opened up. Meantime, however scrupulously 
and justifiably America avoids physical intermarriage 
with the negro, the comic spirit cannot fail to note the 
spiritual miscegenation which, while clothing, com- 
mercialising, and Christianising the ex-African, has 
given “ rag-time ” and the sex-dances that go to it, 
first to white America and thence to the whole white 
world. 

The action of the crucible is thus not exclusively 
physical—a consideration particularly important as 
regards the Jew. ‘The Jew may be Americanised and 
the American Judaised without any gamic inter- 
action. 


207 


IV 

Among the Jews The Melting Pot, though it has 
in some instances served to interpret to each other 
the old generation and the new, has more frequently 
been misunderstood by both. While a distinguished 
Christian clergyman wrote that it was “‘ calculated to 
do for the Jewish race what ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ 
did for the coloured man,” the Jewish pulpits of 
America have resounded with denunciation of its 
supposed solution of the Jewish problem by dissolu- 
tion. As if even a play with a purpose could do 
more than suggest and interpret! It is true that its 
leading figure, David Quixano, advocates absorption 
in America, but even he is speaking solely of the 
American Jews and asks his uncle why, if he objects 
to the dissolving process, he did not work for a separate 
Jewish land. He is not offering a panacea for the 
Jewish problem, universally applicable. But he urges 
that the conditions offered to the Jew in America are 
without parallel throughout the world. 

And, in sooth, the Jew is here citizen of a republic 
without a State religion—a republic resting, moreover, 
on the same simple principles of justice and equal 
rights as the Mosaic Commonwealth from which the 
Puritan Fathers drew their inspiration. In America, 
therefore, the Jew, by a roundabout journey from 
Zion, has come into his own again. It is by no mere 
accident that when an inscription was needed for 
the colossal statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, 
that ‘“‘ Mother of Exiles”? whose torch lights the 


entrance to the New Jerusalem, the best expression 
208 


of the spirit of Americanism was found in the sonnet of 
the Jewess, Emma Lazarus: 


Give me your tirea, your puo7, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. 


And if, alas! passing through the golden door, the 
Jew finds his New Jerusalem as much a caricature by 
the crumbling of its early ideals as the old became by 
the fading of the visions of Isaiah and Amos, he may 
find his mission in fighting for the preservation of 
the original Hebraic pattern. In this fight he will 
not be alone, and intermarriage with his fellow- 
crusaders in the new Land of Promise will naturally 
follow wherever, as with David Quixano and Vera 
Revendal, no theological differences divide. ‘There will 
be neither Jew nor Greek. Intermarriage, wherever 
there is social intimacy, will follow, even when the 
parties stand in opposite religious camps; but 
this is less advisable as leading to a house divided 
against itself and to dissension in the upbringing of 
the children. It is only when a common outlook has 
been reached, transcending the old doctrinal differ- 
ences, that intermarriage is denuded of those latent 
discords which the instinct of mankind divines, and 
which keep even Catholic and Protestant wisely apart. 

These discords, together with the prevalent anti- 
Semitism and his own ingrained persistence, tend to 
preserve the Jew even in the “ Melting Pot,” so that 


his dissolution must be necessarily slower than that of 
200 © 


the similar aggregations of Germans, Italians, or Poles. 
But the process for all is the same, however tempered 
by specific factors. Beginning as broken-ofi bits of 
Germany, Italy, or Poland, with newspapers and 
theatres in German, Italian, or Polish, these colonies 
- gradually become Americanised, their vernaculars, 
even when jealously cherished, become a mere medium 
for American conceptions of life; while in the third 
generation the child is ashamed both of its parents 
and their lingo, the newspapers dwindle in circulation, 
the theatres languish. ‘The reality of this process 
has been denied by no less distinguished an American 
than Dr. Charles Eliot, ex-President of Harvard Univer- 
sity, whose prophecy of Jewish solidarity in America 
and of the contribution of Judaism to the world’s 
future is more optimistic than my own. Dr. Eliot 
points to the still unmelted heaps of racial matter, 
without suspecting—although he is a chemist—that 
their semblance of solidity is only kept up by the 
constant immigration of similar atoms to the base to 
replace those liquefied at the apex. Once America 
slams her doors, the crucible will roar like a closed 
furnace. 

Heaven forbid, however, that the doors shall be 
slammed for centuries yet. The notion that the few 
millions of people in America have a moral right to 
exclude others is monstrous. Exclusiveness may have 
some justification in countries, especially when old 
and well-populated; but for continents like the 
United States—or for the matter of that Canada and 
Australia—to mistake themselves for mere countries is 


an intolerable injustice to the rest of the human race. 
210 


The exclusion of criminals even is as impossible in 
practice as the exclusion of the sick and ailing is 
unchristian. Infinitely more important were it to 
keep the gates of birth free from undesirables. As 
for the exclusion of the able-bodied, whether illiterate 
or literate, that is sheer economic madness in so empty 
a continent, especially with the Panama Canal to divert 
them to the least developed States. Fortunately, any 
serious restriction will avenge itself not only by the 
stagnation of many of the States, but by the paralysis 
of the great liners which depend on steerage passengers, 
without whom freights and fares will rise and saloon 
passengers be docked of their sailing facilities. Mean- 
time the inquisition at Ellis Island has to its account 
cruelties no less atrocious than the ancient Spanish— 
cruelties that only flash into momentary prominence 
when some luxurious music-hall lady of dubious 
morals has a taste of the barbarities meted out daily 
to blameless and hard-working refugees from oppression 
or hunger, who, having staked their all on the great 
adventure, find themselves hustled back, penniless and 


heartbroken, to the Old World. 


V 


Whether any country will ever again be based 
like those of the Old World upon a unity of race 
or religion is a matter of doubt. New England, of 
course, like Pennsylvania and Maryland, owes its incep- 
tion to religion, but the original impulse has long 
been submerged by purely economic pressures. And 


the same motley immigration from the Old World 
211 


is building up the bulk of the coming countries. At 
most, the dominant language gives a semblance of 
unity and serves to attract a considerable stream of 
immigrants who speak it, as of Portuguese to Brazil, 
Spaniards to the Argentine. But the chief magnet 
remains economic, for Brazil draws six times as many 
Italians as Portuguese, and the Argentine two and a 
half times as many Italians as Spanish. It may be 
urged, of course, that the Italian gravitation to these 
countries is still a matter of race, and that, in the 
absence of an El Dorado of his own, the Italian is 
attracted towards States that are at least Latin. But 
though Brazil and the Argentine be predominantly 
Latin, the minority of Germans, Austrians, and Swiss 
is by no means insignificant. The great modern 
steamship, in fact—supplemented by its wandering 
and seductive agent—is playing the part in the world 
formerly played by invasions and crusades, while the 
“economic ”’ immigrant 1s more and more replacing 
the refugee, just as the purely commercial company 
working under native law is replacing the Chartered 
Company which was a law to itself. How small a 
part in the modern movement is played by patriotism 
proper may be seen from the avidity with which the 
farmers of the United States cross the borders to 
Canada to obtain the large free holdings which enable 
them to sell off their American properties. How little 
the proudest tradition counts against the environment 
is shown in the shame felt by Argentine-born children 
for the English spoken by their British parents. 

The difference in the method of importing the 


ingredients makes thus no difference to the action of 
212 


the crucible. Though the peoples now in process 
of formation in the New World are being recruited 
by mainly economic forces, it may be predicted they 
will ultimately harden into homogeneity of race, if 
not even of belief. For internationalism in religion 
seems to be again receding in favour of national 
religions (if, indeed, these were ever more than 
superficially superseded), at any rate in favour of 
nationalism raised into religion. 

If racial homogeneity has not yet been evolved 
completely even in England—and, of course, the 
tendency can never be more than asymptotic—it is 
because cheap and easy transport and communication, 
with freedom of economic movement, have been late 
developments and are still far from perfect. Hence, 
there has never been a thorough shake-up and admix- 
ture of elements, so that certain counties and corners 
have retained types and breeds peculiar to them. 
But with the ever-growing interconnection of all 
parts of the country, and with the multiplication of 
labour bureaux, these breeds and types will be—alas, 
for local colour !—increasingly absorbed in the general 
mass. For fusion and unification are part of the 
historic life-process. ‘‘ Normans and Saxons and 
Danes ”’ are we here in England, yes and Huguenots 
and Flemings and Gascons and Angevins and Jews and 
many other things. 

In fact, according to Sir Harry Johnston, there is 
hardly an ethnic element that has not entered into 
the Englishman, including even the missing link, as 
the Piltdown skull would seem to testify. ‘The earlier 


discovery at Galley Hill showed Britannia rising from 
213 


the apes with an extinct Tasmanian type, not unlike 
the surviving aboriginal Australian. ‘Then the west o? 
Britain was invaded by a negroid type from France 
followed by an Eskimo type of which traces are still tc 
be seen in the West of Ireland and parts of Scotland. 
Next came the true Mediterranean white man, the 
Iberian, with dark hair and eyes and a white skin ; 
and then the round-headed people of the Bronze 
Age, probably Asiatic. And then the Gael, the long- 
headed, fair-haired Aryan, who ruled by iron and 
whose Keltic vocabulary was tinged with Iberian, and 
who was followed by the Brython or Belgian. And, at 
some unknown date, we have to allow for the invasion 
of North Britain by another Germanic type, the 
Caledonian, which would seem to have been a Norse 
stock, foreshadowing the later Norman Conquest. 
And, as if this mish-mash was not confusion enough, 
came to make it worse confounded the Roman 
conquerors, trailing like a mantle of many colours 
the subject-races of their far-flung Empire. 

Is it wonderful if the crucible, capable of fusing 
such a motley of types into “ the true-born Briton,” 
should be melting up its Jews like old silver? The 
comparison belongs to Mr. Walkley, who was more 
moved by the beauty of the old and the pathos of its 
passing than by the resplendence of the new, and who 
seemed to forget that it is for the dramatist to register 
both impartially—their conflict constituting another 
of those spiritual duels which are peculiarly his affair. 
Jews are, unlike negroes, a ‘‘ recessive’ type, whose 
physical traits tend to disappear in the blended off- 


spring. ‘There does not exist in England to-day a 
214 


single representative of the Jewish families whom 
Cromwell admitted, though their lineage may be 
traced in not a few noble families. ‘Thus every country 
has been and is a “* Melting Pot.”? But America, 
exhibiting the normal fusing process magnified many 
thousand diameters and diversified beyond all historic 
experience, and fed not by successive waves of immigra- 
tion but by a hodge-podge of simultaneous hordes, 
is, in Bacon’s phrase, an ‘‘ ostensive instance” of 
a universal phenomenon. America is the ‘‘ Melting 
rots? 

Her people has already begun to take on such a 
complexion of its own, it is already so emphatically 
tending to a new race, crossed with every European 
type, that the British illusion of a cousinly Anglo- 
Saxon people with whom war is unthinkable is sheer 
wilful blindness. Even to-day, while the mixture is 
still largely mechanical not chemical, the Anglo-Saxon 
element is only preponderant ; it is very far from being 
the sum total. 


VI 


While our sluggish and sensual English stage has 
resisted and even burked the writer’s attempt to 
express in terms of the theatre our European problems 
of war and religion, and to interpret through art the 
“‘vears of the modern, years of the unperformed,” it 
remains to be acknowledged with gratitude that this 
play, designed to bring home to America both its 
comparative rawness and emptiness and its true 
significance and potentiality for history and civilisa- 
tion, has been universally acclaimed by Americans 
215 


as a revelation of Americanism, despite that it contains 
only one native-born American character, and that a 
bad one. Played throughout the length and breadth 
of the States since its original production in 1908, 
given, moreover, in Universities and Women’s Colleges, 
passing through edition after edition in book form, 
cited by preachers and journalists, politicians and 
Presidential candidates, even calling into existence a 
‘“* Melting Pot”? Club in Boston, it has had the happy 
fortune to contribute its title to current thought, 
and, in the testimony of Jane Addams, to “ perform 
a great service to America by reminding us of the 
high hopes of the founders of the Republic.” 
Lee 


Fanuary 1914. 





Printed in the United States of America. 





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CHOSEN PEOPLES 


Being The First ‘‘Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture’”’ 
delivered before the Jewish Historical Society 


at University College on Easter- 
1918 
Passover Sunday, ae 


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TO 


MRS. REDCLIFFE N. SALAMAN 


THIS LITTLE BOOK IN HER 
FATHER’S MEMORY 





NOTE 


HE Arthur Davis Memorial Lec- 
ah ture was founded in 1917, under the 
auspices of the Jewish Historical Society 
of England, by his collaborators in the 
translation of “The Service of the Syna- 
gogue,” with the object of fostering He- 
braic thought and learning in honour of an 
unworldly scholar. The Lecture is to be 
given annually in the anniversary week of 
his death, and the lectureship is to be open 
to men or women of any race or creed, who 
are to have absolute liberty in the treat- 


ment of their subject. 





FOREWORD 


Mr. Arthur Davis, in whose memory has 
been founded the series of Lectures de- 
voted to the fostering of Hebraic thought 
and learning, of which this is the first, was 
born in 1846 and died on the first day of 
Passover, 1906. His childhood was spent 
in the town of Derby, where there was 
then no Synagogue or Jewish minister or 
teacher of Hebrew. Spontaneously he 
developed a strong Jewish consciousness, 
and an enthusiasm for the Hebrew lan- 
guage, which led him to become one of its 
greatest scholars in this, or any other, 
country. 


He was able to put his learning to good 
9 


10 Foreword 


use. He observed the wise maxim of 
Leonardo da Vinci, “Avoid studies of 
which the result dies with the worker.” 
He was not one of those learned men, of 
whom there are many examples—a recent 
and conspicuous instance was the late 
Lord Acton—whose minds are so choked 
with the accumulations of the knowledge 
they have absorbed that they can produce 
little or nothing. His output, though not 
prolific, was substantial. In middle life 
he wrote a volume on “The Hebrew Ac- 
cents of the Twenty-one Books of the 
Bible,” which has become a classical au- 
thority on that somewhat recondite sub- 
ject. It was he who originated and 
planned the new edition of the Festival 
Prayer Book in six volumes, and he wrote 


most of the prose translations. When he 


Foreword 11 


died, though only two volumes out of the 
six had been published, he left the whole 
of the text complete. To Mr. Herbert 
M. Adler, who had been his collaborator 
from the beginning, fell the finishing of 
the great editorial task. 

Not least of his services lay in the fact 
that he had transmitted much of his know]l- 
edge to his two daughters, who have 
worthily continued his tradition of He- 
brew scholarship and culture. 

Arthur Davis’s life work, then, was that 
of a student and interpreter of Hebrew. 
It is a profoundly interesting fact that, in 
our age, movements have been set on foot 
in more than one direction for the revival of 
languages which were dead or dying. We 
see before our eyes Welsh and Irish in 


process of being saved from extinction, 


12 Foreword 


with the hope perhaps of restoring their 
ancient glories in poetry and prose.. Such 
movements show that our time is not so 
utilitarian and materialistic as is often sup- 
posed. A similar revivifying process is 
affecting Hebrew. For centuries it has 
been preserved as a ritual language, shel- 
tered within the walls of the Synagogue; 
often not fully understood, and never 
spoken, by the members of the congrega- 
tions. Now it is becoming in Palestine 
once more a living and spoken language. 

Hebrew is one example among many 
of a language outliving for purposes of 
ritual its use in ordinary speech. A ritual 
is regarded as a sacred thing, unchanging, 
and usually unchangeable, except as the 
result of some great religious upheaval. 


The language in which it is framed con- 


Foreword 13 


tinues fixed, amid the slowly developing 
conditions of the workaday world. Often, 
indeed, the use of an ancient language, 
which has gradually fallen into disuse 
among the people, is deliberately main- 
tained for the air of mystery and of awe 
which is conveyed by its use, and which 
has something of the same effect upon the 
intellect as the “dim religious light” of a 
cathedral has upon the emotions. Fur- 
ther, it reserves to the priesthood a kind 
of esoteric knowledge, which gives them 
an additional authority that they would 
desire to maintain. So we find that in 
the days of Marcus Aurelius an ancient 
Salian liturgy was used in the Roman 
temples which had become almost unin- 
telligible to the worshippers. The ritual 


of the religion of Isis in Greece was, at 


14 Foreword 


the same period, conducted in an unknown 
tongue. In the present age Church 
Slavonic, the ecclesiastical language of the 
orthodox Slavs, is only just intelligible to 
the peasantry of Russia and the neigh- 
bouring Slav countries. The Buddhists 
of China conduct their services in Sanscrit, 
which neither the monks nor the people un- 
derstand, and the services of the Buddhists 
in Japan are either in Sanscrit or in an- 
cient Chinese. I believe it is a fact that 
in Abyssinia, again, the liturgy is in a lan- 
guage called Geez, which is no longer in 
use as a living tongue and is not under- 
stood. 

But we need not go to earlier centuries 
or to distant countries for examples. In 
any Roman Catholic church in London to- 


day you will find the service conducted in 


Foreword 15 


a language which, if understood at all by 
the general body of the congregation, has 
been learnt by them only for the purnoses 
of the liturgy. 

Of all these ritual languages which have 
outlived their current use and have been 
preserved for religious purposes alone, 
Hebrew is, so far as I am aware, the only 
one which has ever showed signs of re- 
newing its old vitality—like the roses of 
Jericho which appear to be dead and 
shrivelled but which, when placed in 
water, recover their vitality and their 
bloom. We may join in hoping that 
again in Palestine Hebrew may recover 
something of its old supremacy in the 
field of morals and of intellect. 

To render this possible the work of 


scholars such as Arthur Davis has con- 


16 Foreword 


tributed. To him this was a labour of 
love, and for love. He would receive no 
payment for any of his religious work or 
writings. Part of the profits that accrued 
from the publication of his edition of ““The 
Services of the Synagogue” has been de- 
voted to the formation of a fund from 
which will be defrayed the expenses—after 
the first—of a series of annual lectures 
on subjects of Jewish interest, to be de- 
livered by men of various schools of 
thought. We are fortunate that the ini- 
tial lecture is to be delivered to-day by the 
most distinguished of living Jewish men 
of letters. 

Arthur Davis was a man of much eleva- 
tion and charm of character. He took an 
active part in the work of communal, and 


particularly educational, organizations. 


Foreword 17 


He was one of those men—not rare among 
Jews, though the rest of the world does 
not always recognize it—who are philan- 
thropic in spirit, practical in action, mod- 
est, self-sacrificing, devoted to a fine 
family life, having in them much of the 
student and something even of the saint. 
It is fitting that his memory should be kept 
alive. 


HERBERT SAMUEL. 





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CHOSEN PEOPLES 





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CHOSEN PEOPLES 


I 


HE claim that the Jews are a 
“Chosen People” has always irri- 
tated the Gentiles. “From olden times,” 
wrote Philostratus in the third century, 
“the Jews have been opposed not only to 
Rome but to the rest of humanity.” 
Even Julian the Apostate, who designed 
to rebuild their Temple, raged at the doc- 
trine of their election. Sinai, said the 
Rabbis with a characteristic pun, has 
evoked Sinah (hatred). 
In our own day, the distinguished ethi- 


cal teacher, Dr. Stanton Coit, complains, 
21 


22 Chosen Peoples 


like Houston Chamberlain, that our Bible 
has checked and blighted all other na- 
tional inspiration: in his book “The Soul 
of America,” he even calls upon me to 
repudiate unequivocally ‘the claim to 
spiritual supremacy over all the peoples 
of the world.” 

The recent revelation of racial arro- 
gance in Germany has provided our ene- 
mies with a new weapon. “Germanism 
is Judaism,” says a writer in the Ameri- 
can Bookman. 'The proposition contains 
just that dash of truth which is more dan- 
gerous than falsehood undiluted; and the 
saying ascribed to Von Tirpitz in 1915 
that the Kaiser spent all his time praying 
and studying Hebrew may serve to give 
it colour. “‘As he talks to-day at Pots- 


> 


dam and Berlin,” says Verhaeren, in his 


Chosen Peoples 23 


book “Belgium’s Agony,” “the Kings of 
Israel and their prophets talked six thou- 
sand years ago at Jerusalem.” The 
chronology is characteristic of anti-Sem- 
itic looseness: six thousand years ago the 
world by Hebrew reckoning had not been 
created, and at any rate the then Kings 
of Jerusalem were not Jewish. But it 
is undeniable that Germanism, like Juda- 
ism, has evolved a doctrine of special elec- 
tion. Spiritual in the teaching of Fichte 
and Treitschke, the doctrine became gross 
and narrow in the Deutsche Religion of 
Friedrich Lange. ‘The German people 
is the elect of God and its enemies are 
the enemies of the Lord.” And this Ger- 
man God, like the popular idea of Jeho- 
vah, is a “Man of War’ who demands 
“eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” and cries 


with savage sublimity :-— 


24 Chosen Peoples 


I will render vengeance to Mine adversaries, 
And will recompense them that hate Me, 

I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, 
And my sword shall devour flesh. 

Judaism has even its Song of Hate, ac- 
companied on the timbrel by Miriam. 
The treatment of the Amalekites and 
other Palestine tribes is a byword. “We 
utterly destroyed every city,” Deuteron- 
omy declares; “the men and the women 
and the little ones; we left none remaining; 
only the cattle we took for a prey unto 
ourselves with the spoil of the cities.” 
David, who is promised of God that his 
seed shall be enthroned for ever, slew sur- 
rendered Moabites in cold blood, and 
Judas Maccabeeus, the other warrior hero 
of the race, when the neutral city of Eph- 
ron refused his army passage, took the 


city, slew every male in it, and passed 


Chosen Peoples 25 


across its burning ruins and_ bleeding 
bodies. The prophet Isaiah pictures the 
wealth of nations—the phrase is his, not 
Adam Smith’s—streaming to Zion by 
argosy and caravan. “For that nation 
and kingdom that will not serve thee shall 
perish. ... Aliens shall build up thy 
walls, and their kings shall minister unto 
thee. Thou shalt suck the milk of na- 
tions.” “The Lord said unto me,” says 
the second Psalm, “Thou art My son, this 
day have I begotten thee. Ask of Me 
and I will give the nations for thine inher- 
itance. . . . Thou shalt break them with 
a rod of iron.” 

Nor are such ideas discarded by the 
synagogue of to-day. Every Saturday 
night the orthodox Jew repeats the prayer 


for material prosperity and the promise of 


26 Chosen Peoples 


ultimate glory: “Thou shalt lend unto 
many nations but thou shalt not borrow; 
and thou shalt rule over many nations but 
they shall not rule over thee.” “Our 
Father, our King,” he prays at the New 
Year, “avenge before our eyes the blood of 
Thy servants that has been spilt.” And 
at the Passover Seder Service he still re- 
peats the Psalmist’s appeal to God to pour 
out His wrath on the heathen who have 
consumed Jacob and laid waste his dwell- 
ing. “Pursue them in anger and destroy 
them from under the heavens of the 
Lord?’ 


II 


UCH might, of course, be adduced 
M to mitigate the seeming ferocity or 
egotism of these passages. It would be 
indeed strange if Prussia, which Napoleon 
wittily described as “hatched from a can- 
non-ball,” should be found really resem- 
bling Judea, whose national greeting was 
“Peace”; whose prophet Ezekiel pro- 
claimed in words of flame and thunder 
God’s judgment upon the great military 
empires of antiquity; whose medieval poet 
Kalir has left in our New Year liturgy 
what might be almost a contemporary pic- 
ture of a brazen autocracy “that planned 


in secret, performed in daring.” And, as 
27 


28 Chosen Peoples 


a matter of fact, some of these passages 
are torn from their context. The pictures 
of Messianic prosperity, for example, are 
invariably set in an ethical framework: 
the all-dominant Israel is also to be 
all-righteous. The blood that is to be 
avenged is the blood of martyrs “who went 
through fire and water for the sanctifica- 
tion of Thy name.” 

But let us take these passages at their 
nakedest. Let us ignore—as completely 
as Jesus did—that the legal penalty of 
“eye for eye” had been commuted into a 
money penalty by the great majority of 
early Pharisaic lawyers. Is not that very 
maxim to-day the clamoured policy of 
Christian multitudes? “Destroy them 
from under the heavens of the Lord!” 


When this is the imprecation of a Vehaeren 


Chosen Peoples 29 


or a Maeterlinck over Belgium and not of 
a medieval Jew over the desolated home of 
Jacob, is it not felt as a righteous cry of the 
heart? Nay, only the other Sunday an 
Englishwoman in a country drawing-room 
assured me she would like to kill every 
German—man or woman—with her own 
hand! 

And here we see the absurdity of judg- 
ing the Bible outside its historic conditions, 
or by standards not comparative. Said 
James Hinton, “The Bible needs inter- 
preting by Nature even as Nature by it.” 
And it is by this canon that we must in- 
terpret the concept of a Chosen People, 
and so much else in our Scriptures. It is 
Life alone that can give us the clue to the 
Bible. ‘This is the only “Guide to the 
Perplexed,” and Maimonides but made 


30 Chosen Peoples 


confusion worse confounded when by alle- 
gations of allegory and other devices of 
the apologist he laboured to reconcile the 
Bible with Aristotle. Equally futile was 
the effort of Manasseh ben Israel to recon- 
cile it with itself. The Baraitha of Rabbi 
Ishmael that when two texts are discrep- 
ant a third text must be found to reconcile 
them is but a temptation to that distorted 
dialectic known as Pilpul. ‘The only true 
“Conciliador” is history, the only real rec- 
onciler human nature. An allegorizmg 
rationalism like Rambam’s leads nowhere 
—or rather everywhere. The same 
method that softened the Oriental amor- 
ousness of “The Song of Solomon”’ into 
an allegory of God’s love for Israel be- 
came, in the hands of Christianity, an al- 


legory of Christ’s love for His Church. 


Chosen Peoples 31 


But if Reason cannot always—as Bachya 
imagined—con/jirm tradition, it can ex- 
plain it historically. It can disentangle 
the lower strands from the higher in that 
motley collection of national literature 
which, extending over many generations 
of authorship, streaked with strayed frag- 
ments of Aramaic, varying from the idyll 
of Ruth to the apocalyptic dreams of 
Daniel, and deprived by Job and Ecclesi- 
astes of even a rambling epical unity, is 
naturally obnoxious to criticism when put 
forward as one uniform Book, still more 
when put forward as uniformly divine. 
For my part I am more lost in wonder 
over the people that produced and pre- 
served and the Synagogue that selected 
and canonized so marvellous a literature, 


than dismayed because occasionally amid 


32 Chosen Peoples 


the organ-music of its Miltons and Words- 
worths there is heard the primeval saga- 


note of heroic savagery. 


III 


S Joseph Jacobs reminded us in his 
A “Biblical Archeology” and as Sir 
James Frazer is just illustrating afresh, 
the whole of Hebrew ritual is permeated 
by savage survivals, a fact recognized by 
Maimonides himself when he declared that 
Moses adapted idolatrous practices to a 
purer worship. Israel was environed by 
barbarous practices and gradually rose be- 
yond them. And it was the same with 
concepts as with practices. Judaism, 
which added to the Bible the fruits of cen- 
turies of spiritual evolution in the shape of 
the Talmud, has passed utterly beyond the 


more primitive stages of the Old Testa- 
33 


34 Chosen Peoples 


ment, even as it has replaced polygamy by 
monogamy. ‘That Song of Hate at the 
Red Sea was wiped out, for example, by 
the oft-quoted Midrash in which God re- 
bukes the angels who wished to join in the 
song. “How can ye sing when My crea- 
tures are perishing?” ‘The very miracles 
of the Old Testament were side-tracked 
by the Rabbinic exposition that they were 
merely special creations antecedent to that 
unchangeable system of nature which went 
its course, however fools suffered. Our 
daily bread, said the sages, is as miraculous 
as the division of the Red Sea. And the 
dry retort of the soberest of Pharisaic 
Rabbis, when a voice from heaven inter- 
fered with the voting on a legal point, 
en mashgichin be-bathkol—“We cannot 
have regard to the Bath Kol, the Torah 


Chosen Peoples 35 


is for earth, not heaven” —was a sign that, 
for one school of thought at least, reason 
and the democratic principle were not to 
be browbeaten, and that the era of miracles 
in Judaism was over. The very incoher- 
ence of the Talmud, its confusion of voices, 
is an index of free thinking. Post-bib- 
lical Israel has had a veritable galaxy of 
thinkers and saints, from Maimonides its 
Aquinas to Crescas its Duns Scotus, from 
Mendelssohn its Erasmus to the Baal- 
Shem its St. Francis. But it has been at 
once the weakness and the strength of 
orthodox Judaism never to have made a 
breach with its past; possibly out of too 
great a reverence for history, possibly out 
of over-consideration for the masses, whose 
mentality would in any case have trans- 


formed the new back again to the old. 


36 Chosen Peoples 


Thus it has carried its whole lumber pi- 
ously forward, even as the human body is, 
according to evolutionists, “a veritable 
museum of relics,” or as whales have ves- 
tiges of hind legs with now immovable 
muscles. Already in the Persian period 
Judaism had begun to evolve “the service 
of the Synagogue,” but it did not shed the 
animal sacrifices, and even when these 
were abruptly ended by the destruction of 
the Temple, and Jochanan ben Zaccai 
must needs substitute prayer and charity, 
Judaism still preserved through the ages 
the nominal hope of their restoration. So 
that even were the Jehovah of the Old 
Testament the fee-fi-fo-fum ogre of pop- 
ular imagination, that tyrant of the 
heavens whose unfairness in choosing 


Israel was only equalled by its bad taste, 


Chosen Peoples 37 


it would not follow that Judaism had not 
silently replaced him by a nobler Deity 
centuries ago. The truth is, however, that 
it is precisely in the Old Testament that 
is reached the highest ethical note ever yet 
sounded, not only by Judaism but by man, 
and that this mass of literature is so satu- 
rated with the conception of a people 
chosen not for its own but for universal 
salvation, that the more material prophe- 
cies—evoked moreover in the bitterness of 
exile, as Belgian poets are now moved to 
foretell restoration and glory—are prac- 
tically swamped. At the worst, we may 
say there are two conflicting currents of 
thought, as there are in the bosom of every 
nation, one primarily self-regarding, and 
the other setting towards the larger life of 
humanity. It may help us to understand 


38 Chosen Peoples 


the paradox of the junction of Israel’s 
glory with God’s, if we remember that the 
most inspired of mortals, those whose life 
is consecrated to an art, a social reform, a 
political redemption, are rarely able to 
separate the success of their mission from 
their own individual success or at least in- 
dividual importance. Even Jesus looked 
forward to his twelve legions of angels and 
his seat at the right hand of Power. But 
in no other nation known to history has 
the balance of motives been cast so over- 
whelmingly on the side of idealism. An 
episode related by Josephus touching 
Pontius Pilate serves to illuminate the 
more famous episode in which he figures. 
When he brought the Roman ensigns with 
Cesar’s effigies to Jerusalem, the Jews so 


wearied him with their petitions to remove 


Chosen Peoples 39 
this defiling deification that at last he sur- 


rounded the petitioners with soldiers and 
menaced them with immediate death un- 
less they ceased to pester and went home. 
“But they threw themselves upon the 
ground and laid their necks bare and said 
they would take their deaths very willingly 
rather than the wisdom of their laws 
should be transgressed.” And Pilate, 
touched, removed the effigies. Sucha story 
explains at once how the Jews could pro- 
duce Jesus and why they could not wor- 
ship him. 

“God’s witnesses,” “a light of the na- 


39 66 99 <6 


tions,” “a suffering servant,” “a kingdom 
of priests’—the old Testament metaphors 
for Israel’s mission are as numerous as 
they are noble. And the lyrics in which 


they occur are unparalleled in literature 


40 Chosen Peoples 


for their fusion of ethical passion with 
poetical beauty. ‘Take, for example, the 
forty-second chapter of Isaiah. (I quote 
as in gratitude bound the accurate Jewish 


version of the Bible we owe to America.) 


Behold My servant whom I uphold; 

Mine elect in whom My soul delighteth; 

I have put My spirit upon him, _ 

He shall make the right to go forth to the na- 
tions : 

He shall not fail or be crushed 

Till he have set the right on the earth, 

And the isles shall wait for his teaching. 

Thus saith God the LORD, 

He that created the heavens, and stretched them 
forth, 

He that spread forth the earth and that which 
cometh out of it, 

He that giveth bread unto the people upon it, 

And spirit to them that walk therein: 

I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, 

And have taken hold of thy hand, 

And kept thee, and set thee for a covenant of 
the people, 


Chosen Peoples 41 


For a light of the nations; 

To open the blind eyes, 

To bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, 

And them that sit in darkness out of the prison- 
house. 

Never was ideal less tribal: it is still the 
dynamic impulse of all civilization. “Let 
justice well up as waters and righteous- 
ness as a mighty stream.” “Nation shall 
not lift sword against nation, neither shall 
there be war any more.” 

Nor does this mission march always 
with the pageantry of external triumph. 
“Despised and forsaken of men,” Isaiah 
paints Israel. “Yet he bore the sin of 
many. And made intercession for the 
transgressors ... with his_ stripes we 
were healed.” 

Happily all that is best in Christendom 


recognizes, with Kuenen or Matthew Ar- 


A2 Chosen Peoples 


nold, the grandeur of the Old Testament 
ideal. But that this ideal penetrated 
equally to our everyday liturgy is less un- 
derstood of the world. “Blessed art 
Thou, O Lord our God, who hast chosen 
Israel from all peoples and given him the 
Law.” Here is no choice of a favourite 
but of a servant, and when it is added that 
“from Zion shall the Law go forth”’ it is 
obvious what that servant’s task is to be. 
“What everlasting love hast Thou loved 
the house of Israel,’ says the Evening 
Prayer. But in what does this love con- 
sist? Is it that we have been pampered, 
cosseted? ‘The contrary. “A Law, and 
commandments, statutes and judgments 
hast Thou taught us.” Before these were 
thundered from Sinai, the historian of the 


Exodus records, Israel was explicitly in- 


Chosen Peoples 43 
formed that only by obedience to them 


could he enjoy peculiar favour. “Now 
therefore, if ye will hearken unto My voice 
indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye 
shall be Mine own treasure from among 
all peoples; for all the earth is Mine; and 
ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, 
and a holy nation.” A chosen people is 
really a choosing people. Not idly does 
Talmudical legend assert that the Law 
was offered first to all other nations and 
only Israel accepted the yoke. 

How far the discipline of the Law ac- 
tually produced the Chosen People postu- 
lated in its conferment is a subtle question 
for pragmatists. Mr. Lucien Wolf once 
urged that “the yoke of the Torah” had 
fashioned a racial aristocracy possessing 


marked biological advantages over aver- 


AA, Chosen Peoples 


age humanity, as well as_ sociological 
superiorities of temperance and family 
life. And indeed the statistics of Jewish 
vitality and brain-power, and even of 
artistic faculty, are amazing enough to 
invite investigation from all eugenists, 
biologists, and statesmen. But whether 
this general superiority—a superiority not 
inconsistent with grave failings and draw- 
backs—is due to the rigorous selection of 
a tragic history, or whether it is, as Ana- 
tole Leroy-Beaulieu maintains, the herit- 
age of a civilization older by thousands of 
years than that of Europe; whether the 
Torah made the greatness of the people, 
or the people—precisely because of its 
greatness—made the Torah; whether we 
have a case of natural election or artificial 


election to study, it is not in any self-suf- 


Chosen Peoples 45 


ficient superiority or aim thereat that the 
essence of Judaism lies, but in an apostolic 
altruism. The old Hebrew writers in- 
_ deed—when one considers the impress the 
Bible was destined to make on the faith, 
art, and imagination of the world—might 
well be credited with the intuition of 
genius in attributing to their people a 
quality of election. And the Jews of to- 
day in attributing to themselves that 
quality would have the ground not only 
of intuition but of history. Nevertheless 
that election is, even by Jewish orthodoxy, 
conceived as designed solely for world- 
service, for that spiritual mission for which 
Israel when fashioned was exiled and scat- 
tered like wind-borne seeds, and of the 
consummation of which his ultimate re- 


patriation and glory will be but the sym- 


46 Chosen Peoples 


bol. It is with Alenw that every service 
ends—the prayer for the coming of the 
Kingdom of God, “when Thou wilt re- 
move the abominations from the earth, and 
the idols will be utterly cut off, when the 
world will be perfected under the King- 
dom of the Almighty and all the children 
of flesh will call upon Thy name, when 
Thou wilt turn unto Thyself all the 
wicked of the earth. . . . In that day the 
Lord shall be One and His name One.” 
Israel disappears altogether in this diurnal 


aspiration. 


IV 


SRAEL disappears, too, in whole 
I books of the Old Testament. What 
has the problem of Job, the wisdom of 
Proverbs, or the pessimism of Ecclesiastes 
to do with the Jew specifically? The 
Psalter would scarcely have had so uni- 
versal an appeal had it been essentially 
rooted in a race. 

In the magnificent cosmic poem of 
Psalm civ—half Whitman, half St. 
Francis—not only his fellow-man but all 
creation comes under the benediction of 
the Hebrew poet’s mood. “The high hills 


are for the wild goats; the rocks are a 
47 


48 Chosen Peoples 


refuge for the conies ... The young 
lions roar after their prey, and seek their 
food from God . . . man goeth forth unto 
his work, and to his labour until the eve- 
ning.” Even in amore primitive Hebrew 
poet the same cosmic universalism reveals 
itself. ‘To the bard of Genesis the rain- 
bow betokens not merely a covenant be- 
tween God and man but a “covenant be- 
tween God and every living creature of all 
flesh that is upon the earth.” 

That the myth of the tribalism of the 
Jewish God should persist in face of such 
passages can only be explained by the fact 
that He shares in the unpopularity of 
His people. Mr. Wells, for example, in 
his finely felt but intellectually incoher- 
ent book, “God the Invisible King,” dis- 


misses Him as a malignant and par- 


Chosen Peoples 49 


tisan Deity,” jealous and pettily stringent. 
At most one is entitled to say with Mr. 
Israel Abrahams in his profound little 
_ book on “Judaism” that “God, in the early 
literature a tribal, non-moral Deity, was 
in the later literature a righteous ruler, 
who, with Amos and Hosea, loved and de- 
manded righteousness in man,” and that 
there was an expansion from a national to 
auniversal Ruler. Butif “by early litera- 
ture” anybody understand simply Genesis, 
if he imagines that the evolutionary move- 
ment in Judaism proceeds regularly from 
Abraham to Isaiah, he is grossly in error. 
No doubt all early gods are tribal, all early 
religions connected with the hearth and 
ancestor worship, but the God of Isaiah 
is already in Genesis, and the tribal God 


has to be exhumed from practically all 


50 Chosen Peoples 


parts of the Bible. But even in the 
crudities of Genesis or Judges that have 
escaped editorship I cannot find Mr. 
Wells’s “malignant” Deity—He is 


? 


really “the invisible King.” The very 
first time Jehovah appears in His tribal 
aspect (Genesis xii.) His promise to 
bless Abraham ends with the assurance— 
and it almost invariably accompanies all 
the repetitions of the promise—“And in 
thee shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed.” Nay, as I pointed out in my 
essay on “The Gods of Germany,” the 
very first words of the Bible, “In the be- 
ginning God created the heaven and the 
earth,” strike a magnificent note of uni- 
versalism, which is sustained in the deriva- 
tion of all humanity from Adam, and 


again from Noah, with one original lan- 


Chosen Peoples 51 


guage. Nor is this a modern gloss, for 
the Talmud already deduces the interpre- 
tation. Racine’s “Esther” in the noble 
lines lauded by Voltaire might be almost 
-rebuking Mr. Wells:— 


Ce Dieu, maitre absolu de la terre et des cieux, 

N’est point tel que l’erreur le figure 4 vos yeux: 

L’Eternel est son nom, le monde est son ouv- 
rage ; 

I] entend les soupirs de ’humble qu’on outrage, 

Juge tous les mortels avec d’égales lois, 

Et du haut de son trdéne interroge les rois. 


—there is the true Hebrew note, the note 
denounced of Nietzsche. 

Is this notorious “tribal God” the God 
of the Mesopotamian sheikh whose seed 
was so invidiously chosen? Well, but of 
this God Abraham asks—in what I must 
continue to call the epochal sentence in 


the Bible—‘‘Shall not the Judge of all the 


52 Chosen Peoples 
earth do right?’ Abraham, in fact, bids 


God down as in some divine Dutch auc- 
tion—Sodom is not to be destroyed if 
it holds fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, 
twenty, nay ten righteous men. Com- 
pare this ethical development of the an- 
cestor of Judaism with that of Pope 
Gregory XIII, in the sixteenth century, 
some thirty-one centuries later: Civitas 
ista potest esse destrui quando in ea plures 
sunt heretici (“A city may be destroyed 
when it harbours a number of heretics’). 
And this claim of man to criticize God 
Jehovah freely concedes. Thus the God 
of Abraham is no God of a tribe, but, like 
the God of the Rabbi who protested 
against the Bath-Kol, the God of Reason 
and Love. As clearly as for the nine- 


teenth-century Martineau, “the seat of 


- Chosen Peoples 58 
authority in Religion” has passed to the 


human conscience. God Himself appeals 
to it in that inversion of the Sodom story, 
the story of Jonah, whose teaching is 
far greater and more wonderful than its 
fish. And this Abrahamic tradition of 
free thought is continued by Moses, who 
boldly comes between Jehovah and the peo- 
ple He designs to destroy. “Wherefore 
should the Egyptians speak, saying, For 
evil did He bring them forth to slay them 
in the mountains .. .? Turn from Thy 
fierce wrath and repent of this evil against 
Thy people.” Moses goes on to remind 
Him of the covenant, “And the Lord re- 
pented of the evil which He said He would 
do unto His people.”’ In the same chap- 
ter, the people having made a golden calf, 
Moses offers his life for their sin; the Old 


54 Chosen Peoples 


Testament here, as in so many places, an- 
ticipating the so-called New, but rejecting 
the notion of vicarious atonement so dras- 
tically that the attempt of dogmatic Chris- 
tianity to base itself on the Old Testa- 
ment can only be described as text-blind. 
And the great answer of Jehovah to 
Moses’s questionng—‘“I AM THAT I 
AM’’—yields already the profound meta- 
physical Deity of Maimonides, that “in- 
visible King’? whom the anonymous New 


Year liturgist celebrates as: 


Highest divinity, 
Dynast of endlessness, 
Timeless resplendency, 
Worshipped eternally, 

Lord of Infinity! 


And the fact that Moses himself was 


married to an Egyptian woman and that 


Chosen Peoples 55 


“a mixed multitude” went up with the Jews 
out of Egypt shows that the narrow tribal- 
ism of Ezra and Nehemiah, with the re- 
grettable rejection of the Samaritans, was 
but a temporary political necessity; while 
the subsequent admission into the canon 
of the book of “Ruth,” with its moral of 
the descent of the Messiah himself from a 
Moabite woman, is an index that univer- 
salism was still unconquered. We have, 
in fact, the recurring clash of centripetal 
and centrifugal forces, and what assured 
the persistence and assures the ultimate 
triumph of the latter is that the race being 
one with the religion could not resist that 
religion’s universal implications. I?f there 
were only a single God, and He a God of 
justice and the world, how could He be 


confined to Israel? The Mission could 


56 Chosen Peoples 


not but come. ‘The true God, urges Mr. 
Wells, has no scorn or hatred for those 
who seek Him through idols. That is 
exactly what Ibn Gabirol said in 1050. 
But those blind seekers needed guiding. 
Religion, in fact, not race, has always been 
the governing principle in Jewish history. 
“T do not know the origin of the term 
Jew,” says Dion Cassius, born in the sec- 
ond century. “The name is used, how- 
ever, to designate all who observe the cus- 
toms of this people, even though they be 
of different race.” Where indeed lay the 
privilege of the Chosen People when the 
Talmud defined a non-idolater as a Jew, 
and ranked a Gentile learned in the Torah 
as greater than the High Priest? Such 
learned proselytes arose in Aquila and 


Theodotion, each of whom made a Greek 


Chosen Peoples 57 


version of the Bible; while the orthodox 
Jew hardly regards his Hebrew text as 
complete unless accompanied by the 
Aramaic version popularly ascribed to the 
proselyte Onkelos. The disagreeable ref- 
erences to proselytes in Rabbinic litera- 
ture, the difficulties thrown in their way, 
and the grotesque conception of their 
status towards their former families, can- 
not counterbalance the fact, established by 
Radin in his learned work, “The Jews 
Among the Greeks and Romans,” that 
there was a carefully planned effort of 
propaganda. Does not indeed Jesus tell 
the Pharisees: “Yecompass sea and land 
to make one proselyte’? Do not Juvenal 
and Horace complain of this Judaising? 
Were not the Idumeans proselytised al- 
most by force? “The Sabbath and the 


58 Chosen Peoples 


Jewish fasts,” says Lecky, doubtless fol- 
lowing Josephus, “became familiar facts 
in all the great cities.’ And Josephus 
himself in that answer to Apion, which 
Judaism has strangely failed to rank as 
one of its greatest documents, declares in 
noble language: “There ought to be but 
one Temple for one God ... and this 
Temple common to all men, because He 
is the common God of all men.” 

It would be a very tough tribal God that 
could survive worshippers of this temper. 
An ancient Midrash taught that in the 
Temple there were seventy sacrifices of- 
fered for the seventy nations. For the 
medieval and rationalist Maimonides the 
election of Israel scarcely exists—even 
the Messiah is only to be a righteous Con- 


queror, whose success will be the test of 


Chosen Peoples 59 


his genuineness. And Spinoza—though 
he, of course, is outside the development 
of the Synagogue proper—refused to see 
in the Jew any superiority save of the 
sociological system for ensuring his eter- 
nity. The comparatively modern Chas- 
sidism, anticipating Mazzini, teaches that 
every nation and language has a special 
channel through which it receives God’s 
gifts. Of contemporary Reform Juda- 
ism, the motto ‘Have we not one father, 
hath not one God created us?” was for- 
mally adopted as the motto of the Con- 
gress of Religions at Washington. “The 
forces of democracy are Israel,” cries the 
American Jew, David Lubin, in an ultra- 
modern adaptation of the Talmudic scale 
of values. There is, in fact, through our 


post-biblical literature almost a note of 


60 Chosen Peoples 


apology for the assumption of the Divine 
mission: perhaps it is as much the off- 
spring of worldly prudence as of spiritual 
progress. ‘The Talmud observed that the 
Law was only given to Israel because he 
was so peculiarly fierce he needed curbing. 
Abraham Ibn Daud at the beginning of 
the twelfth century urged that God had 
to reveal Himself to some nation to show 
that He did not hold Himself aloof from 
the universe, leaving its rule to the stars: 
it is the very argument as to the need for 
Christ employed by Mr. Balfour in his 
“Foundations of Belief.” Crescas, in the 
fourteenth century, declared—like an 
earlier Buckle—that the excellence of the 
Jew sprang merely from the excellence of 
Palestine. Mr. Abelson, in his recent 


valuable book on Jewish mysticism, al- 


Chosen Peoples 61 
leges that when Rabbi Akiba called the 


Jews “Sons of God” he meant only that 
all other nations were idolaters. But in 
reality Akiba meant what he said—what 
indeed had been said throughout the Bible 
from Deuteronomy downwards. In the 


words of Hosea: 


When Israel was a child, then I loved him, 
And out of Egypt I called My son. | 


No evidence of the universalism of Israel’s 
mission can away with the fact that it was 
still his mission, the mission of a Chosen 
People. And this conviction, permeating 
and penetrating his whole literature and 
broidering itself with an Oriental exuber- 
ance of legendary fantasy, poetic or puer- 
ile, takes on in places an intimacy, some- 


times touching in its tender mysticism, 


62 Chosen Peoples 


sometimes almost grotesque in its crude 
reminder to God that after all His own 
glory and reputation are bound up with 
His people’s, and that He must not go 
too far in His chastisements lest the 
heathen mock. Reversed, this apprehen- 
sion produced the concept of the Chillul 
Hashem, “the profanation of the Name.” 
Israel, in his turn, was in honour bound 
not to lower the reputation of the Deity, 
who had chosen him out. On the con- 
trary, he was to promote the Kiddush 
Hashem “the sanctification of the Name.” 
Thus the doctrine of election made not for 
arrogance but for a sense of Noblesse 
oblige. As the “Hymn of Glory” recited 
at New Year says in a more poetic sense: 
“His glory is on me and mine on Him.” 


“He loves His people,” says the hymn, 


Chosen Peoples 63 


“and inhabits their praises.” Indeed, ac- 
cording to Schechter, the ancient Rabbis 
actually conceived God as existing only 
through Israel’s continuous testimony and 
ceasing were Israel—per impossibile—to 
disappear. It is a mysticism not without 
affinity to Mr. Wells’s. A  Chassidic 
Rabbi, quoted by Mr. Wassilevsky, 
teaches in the same spirit that God and 
Israel, like Father and Son, are each in- 
complete without the other. In another 
passage of Hosea—a passage recited at 
the everyday winding of phylacteries— 
the imagery is of wedded lovers. “I will 
betroth thee unto Me for ever, Yea I will 
betroth thee unto Me in righteousness and 
in Judgment and in loving-kindness and 
in mercy.” 


But it is in the glowing, poetic soul of 


64 Chosen Peoples 


Jehuda Ha-Levi that this election of 
Israel, like the passion for Palestine, finds 
its supreme and uncompromising expres- 
sion. ‘Israel,’ declares the author of the 
“Cuzari’ in a famous dictum, “is among 
the nations like the heart among the 
limbs.” Do not imagine he referred to 
the heart as a pump, feeding the veins of 
the nations—Harvey was still five cen- 
turies in the future—he meant the heart 
as the centre of feeling and the symbol of 
the spirit. And examining the question 
why Israel had been thus chosen, he de- 
clares plumply that it is as little worthy of 
consideration as why the animals had not 
been created men. ‘This is, of course, the 
only answer. The wind of creation and 


inspiration bloweth where it listeth. As 


Chosen Peoples 65 


Tennyson said in a similar connection: 


And if it is so, so it is, you know, 
And if it be so, so be it! 


V 


UT although, as with all other mani- 
festations of genius, Science cannot 

tell us why the Jewish race was so endowed 
spiritually, it can show us by parallel cases 
that there is nothing unique in consider- 
ing yourself a Chosen People—as indeed 
the accusation with which we began re- 
minds us. And it can show us that a na- 
tion’s assignment of a mission to itself is 
not a sudden growth. “Unlike any other 
nation,” says the learned and _ saintly 
leader of Reform Judaism, Dr. Kohler, 
in his article on “Chosen People’ in the 
Jewish Encyclopedia, “the Jewish people 


began their career conscious of their life- 
66 


Chosen Peoples 67 
purpose and world-duty as the priests and 


teachers of a universal religious truth.” 
This is indeed a strange statement, and 
only on the theory that its author was ex- 
pounding the biblical standpoint, and not 
his own, can it be reconciled with his gen- 
eral doctrine of progress and evolution in 
Hebrew thought. It would seem to ac- 
cept the Sinaitic Covenant as a literal epi- 
sode, and even to synchronise the Mission 
with it. But an investigation of the his- 
tory of other Chosen Peoples will, I fear, 
dissipate any notion that the Sinaitic 
Covenant was other than a symbolic sum- 
mary of the national genius for religion, a 
sublime legend retrospectively created. 
And the mission to other nations must have 
been evolved still later. ‘The conception 


or feeling of a mission grew up and was 


68 Chosen Peoples 


developed by slow degrees,” says Mr. 
Montefiore, and this sounds much nearer 
the truth. For, as I said, history is the 
sole clue to the Bible—history, which ac- 
cording to Bacon, is “philosophy teaching 
by example.” And the more modern the 
history is, and the nearer in time, the bet- 
ter we can understand it. We have be- 
fore our very eyes the moving spectacle of 
the newest of nations setting herself 
through a President-Prophet the noblest 
mission ever formulated outside the Bible. 
Through another great prophet—sprung 
like Amos from the people—through 
Abraham Lincoln, America had already 
swept away slavery. I do not know ex- 
actly when she began to call herself ““God’s 
own country,” but her National Anthem, 


“My Country, ’tis of thee,” dating from 


Chosen Peoples 69 
1832, fixes the date when America, soon 


after the second war with England, which 
ended in 1814, consciously felt herself as 
a Holy Land; far as visitors like Dickens 
felt her from the perfection implied in her 
soaring Spread-Eagle rhetoric. The Pil- 
grim Fathers went to America merely for 
their own freedom of religious worship: 
they were actually intolerant to others. 
From a sectarian patriotism developed 
what I have called “The Melting Pot,” 
with its high universal mission, first at 
home and now over the world at large. 
The stages of growth are still more 
clearly marked in English history. That 
national self-consciousness which to-day 
gives itself the mission of defending the 
liberties of mankind, and which stands in 


the breach undaunted and indomitable, be- 


70 _ Chosen Peoples 


gan with that mere insular patriotism 
which finds such moving expression in the 


pean of Shakespeare: 


This happy breed of men, this little world, 


This precious stone set in the silver sea, 


This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this 
England, 


Thissiend of aa Heap soune this deans dear 
land. 

This sense of itself had been born only 
in the thirteenth century, and at first the 
growing consciousness of national power, 
though it soon developed an assurance of 
special protection—“‘‘the favour of the love 
of Heaven,” wrote Milton in his “Areo- 


pagitica,” “we have great argument to 
think in a peculiar manner propitious and 


propending towards us’—was tempered 


Chosen Peoples re 


by that humility still to be seen in the 
liturgy of its Church, which ascribes its 
victories not to the might of the English 
arm, but to the favour of God. But one 
hundred and twenty-five years after 
Shakespeare, the land which the Eliza- 
bethan translators of the Bible called 
“Our Sion,” and whose mission, accord- 
ing to Milton, had been to sound forth 
“the first tidings and trumpet of reforma- 
tion to all Europe,” had sunk to the swag- 
gering militarism that found expression 


in “Rule, Britannia.” 


When Britain first at Heaven’s command 
Arose from out the azure main, 
This was the charter of the land, 
And guardian angels sung this strain: 
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; 
Britons never will be slaves. 


72 Chosen Peoples 


The nations not so blest as thee 
Must in their turn to tyrants fall; 
While thou shalt flourish, great and free, 
The dread and envy of them all. 


To thee belongs the rural reign, 
Thy cities shall with commerce shine: 
All thine shall be the subject main, 
And every shore it circles, thine. 


It is the true expression of its period— 
a period which Sir John Seeley in his “Ex- 
pansion of England” characterizes as the 
period of the struggle with France 
for the possession of India and the 
New World: there were no less than 
seven wars with France, for France 
had replaced Spain in that great com- 
petition of the five western maritime 
States of Europe for Transatlantic trade 
and colonies, in which Seeley sums up the 


bulk of two centuries of European history. 


Chosen Peoples 73 


Well may Mr. Chesterton point to the 
sinking of the Armada as the date when 
an Old Testament sense of being “an- 
swered in stormy oracles of air and sea” 
lowered Englishmen into a Chosen Peo- 
ple. Shakespeare saw the sea serving 
England in the modest office of a moat: 
it was now to be the high-road of Empire. 
The Armada was shattered in 1588. In 
1600 the Kast India Company is formed 
to trade all over the world. In 1606 is 
founded the British colony of Virginia and 
in 1620 New England. It helps us to un- 
derstand the dual and conflicting energies 
stimulated in the atmosphere of celestial 
protection, if we recall that it was in 1604 
that was initiated the great Elizabethan 
translation of the Bible. 

In Cromwell, that typical Englishman, 


74 | Chosen Peoples 


these two strands of impulse are seen 
united. Ever conceiving himself the serv- 
ant of God, he seized Jamaica in a time 
of profound peace and in defiance of 
treaty. Was not Catholic Spain the 
enemy of God? Delenda est Carthago is 
his feeling towards the rival Holland. 
Miracles attend his battle. “The Lord by 
his Providence put a cloud over the Moon, 
thereby giving us the opportunity to draw 
off those horse.” Yet this elect of God 
ruthlessly massacres surrendered Irish 
garrisons. “Sir,” he writes with almost 
childish naiveté, “God hath taken away 
your eldest son by a cannon shot.” We 
do not need Carlyle’s warning that he was 
not a hypocrite. Does not Marvell, la- 


menting his death, record in words curi- 


Chosen Peoples 15 
ously like Bismarck’s that his deceased 


hero 


The soldier taught that inward mail to wear 
And fearing God, how they should nothing 


fear? 


The fact is that great and masterful 
souls identify themselves with the uni- 
verse. And so do great and masterful 
nations. It is a dangerous tendency. 

At the death of Queen Anne England 
stood at the top of the nations. But it 
was a greatness tainted by the slave-trade 
abroad, and poverty, ignorance, and gin- 
drinking at home. We recapture the at- 
mosphere of “Rule, Britannia” when we 
recall that Thomson wrote it to the peals 
of the joy-bells and the flare of the bon- 
fires by which the mob celebrated its fore- 


76 Chosen Peoples 


ing Walpole into a war to safeguard Brit- 
ish trade in the Spanish main. Seeley 
claims, indeed, that the growth of the Km- 
pire was always sub-conscious or semi- 
conscious at its best. This is not wholly 
true, for in “The Masque of Alfred” in 
which “Rule, Britannia” is enshrined, 
Thomson displays as keen and exact a 
sense of the lines of England’s destiny as 
Seeley acquired by painful historic excog- 
itation. For after a vision which irresist- 


ibly recalls the grosser Hebrew prophecies: 


I see thy commerce, Britain, grasp the world: 
All nations serve thee; every foreign flood, 
Subjected, pays its tribute to the Thames, 
he points to the virgin shores “beyond the 


vast Atlantic surge” and cries: 


This new world, 
Shook to its centre, trembles at her name: 


Chosen Peoples 77 


And there her sons, with aim exalted, sow 
The seeds of rising empire, arts, and arms. 


Britons, proceed, the subject deep command, 

Awe with your navies every hostile land. 

Vain are their threats, their armies all are vain: 

They rule the balanced world who rule the 
main. 


But you have only to remember that 
Seeley’s famous book was written ex- 
pressly to persuade the England of 1883 
not to give up India and the Colonies, to 
see how little “Rule, Britannia” expressed 
the truer soul of Britain. The purifica- 
tion of England which the Methodist 
movement began and which manifested 
itself, among other things, in sweeping 
away the slave-trade, necessitated a less 
crude formula for the still invincible in- 
stinct of expansion, and in Kipling a 


prophet arose, of a genius akin to that of 


78 Chosen Peoples 
the Old Testament, to spiritualize the doc- 


trine of the Chosen People. The mission 
which in Thomson is purely self-centred 
becomes in Kipling almost as universal as 


the visions of the Hebrew bards. 


The Lord our God Most High, 

He hath made the deep as dry, 

He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of 
all the earth. . 


But it is only as the instrument of His 
purpose, and that purpose is characteris- 


tically practical. 


Keep ye the Law—be swift in all obedience ; 
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge 
the ford, 
Make ye sure to each his own, 
That he reap where he hath sown; 
By the peace among our peoples let men know 
we serve the Lord. 


And it is a true picture of British activities. 


Chosen Peoples 79 


Even thus has England on the whole 
ruled the territories into which adventure 
or economic motives drew her. ‘The very 
Ambassador from Germany, Prince Lich- 
nowsky, agrees with Rhodes that the sal- 
vation of mankind hes in British imperial- 
ism. But note how the less spiritual fac- 
tors are ignored, how the prophet presents 
his people as a nation of pioneer martyrs, 
how the mission, finally become conscious 
of itself, gilds with backward rays the 
whole path of national advance, as the 
trail of light from the stern of a vessel 
gives the illusion that it has come by a 
shining road. Missions are not discov- 
ered till they are already in action. Not 
unlike those archers of whom the Talmud 
wittily says, they first shoot the arrow and 


then fix the target, nations ascribe to them- 


80 Chosen Peoples 


selves purposes of which they were orig- 
inally unconscious. First comes the ting- 
ling consciousness of achievement and 
power, then a glamour of retrospective 
legend to explain and justify it. Thus 
it is that that great struggle for sea-power 
to which Spain, Portugal, Holland, Eng- 
land, and France all contributed maritime 
genius and boundless courage, becomes 
transformed under the half-accidental suc- 
cess of one nation into an almost religious 
epic of a destined wave-ruler. ‘There 
could not be a finer British spirit than Mr. 
Chesterton’s fallen friend, the poet Ver- 


nede, yet even he writes :— 


God grant to us the old Armada weather. 


Thomson was not poet enough—nor the 


eighteenth century naive enough—to cre- 


Chosen Peoples 81 


ate a legend in sober earnest. But the 
fact that he throws “Rule, Britannia” eight 
centuries back to the time of Alfred the 
Great, before whom this glorious pageant 
of his country’s future is prophetically un- 
rolled, serves to illustrate the retrospec- 
tive habit of national missions. 

The history of England is brief, and the 
mission evolved in her seven centuries has 
not yet finally shaped itself, is indeed now 
shaping itself afresh in the furnace of war. 
Her poets have not always troubled with 
the soul of her. They have often, as 
Courthope complained of Keats, turned 


away from her destinies to 


Magic casements opening on the foam 
Of faéry lands in perilous seas forlorn. 


But Israel had abundant time to per- 


82 Chosen Peoples 


fect her conception of herself. From 
Moses to Ezra was over a thousand years, 
and the roots of the race are placed still 
earlier. Can we doubt it was by a proc- 
ess analogous to that we see at work in 
England, that Israel evolved into a Peo- 
ple chosen for world-service? 'The Cov- 
enant of Israel was inscribed slowly in 
the Jewish heart: it had no more existence 
elsewhere than the New Covenant which 
Jeremiah announced the Lord would write 
there, no more objective reality than the 
Charter which Britain received when 
“first at Heaven’s command” she “rose 
from out the azure main,” or than that 
Contrat Social by which Rousseau ex- 
pressed the rights of the individual in so- 
ciety. But to say this is not to make the 


mission false. Ibsen might label these 


Chosen Peoples 83 
vitalizing impulses “Life-illusions,” but 
the criteria of objective truth do not apply 
to volitional verities. National missions 
become false only when nations are false to 
them. Nor does the gradualness of their 
evolution rob them of their mystery. 
Hamlet is not less inspired because 
Shakespeare began as a writer of pothooks 
and hangers. 

If it is suggested that to explain the 
Bible by men and nations under its spell is 
to reason in a circle, the answer is that 
the biblical vocabulary merely provides 
a medium of expression for a universal 
tendency. Claudian, addressing the Em- 


peror Theodosius, wrote :— 


O nimium dilecte deo, cui militat zther. 


The Egyptian god Ammon, in the great 


84 Chosen Peoples 


battle epic of Rameses II, assured the 


monarch :— 


Lo, I am with thee, my son; fear not, Ramessu 
Miammon! 

Ra, thy father, is with thee, his hand shall up- 
hold thee in danger, 

More am I worth unto thee than thousands and 
thousands of soldiers. 


The preamble to the modern Japanese 
Constitution declares it to be “in pursu- 
ance of a great policy co-extensive with the 
Heavens and the Earth.” 


Vi 


ETURNING now finally to our 
starting-point, the proposition that 
“Germanism is Judaism,” we are able to 
see its full grotesqueness. If Germanism 
resembles Judaism, it is as a monkey re- 
sembles a man. Where it does suggest 
Judaism is in the sense it gives the mean- 
est of its citizens that they form part of a 
great historic organism, which moves to 
great purposes: a sense which the poorer 
Englishman has unfortunately lacked, and 
which is only now awakening in the com- 
mon British breast. But even here the 
affinities of Germany are rather with 


Japan than with Judea. For in Japan, 
85 


86 Chosen Peoples 


too, beneath all the romance of Bushido 
and the Samurai, lies the asphyxiation of 
the individual and his sacrifice to the State. 
It is the resurrection of those ancient 
Pagan Constitutions for which individ- 
uality scarcely existed, which could ex- 
pose infants or kill off old men because 
the State was the supreme ethical end; 
it is the revival on a greater scale of the 
medieval city commune, which sucked its 
vigorous life from the veins of its citizens. 
Even so Prussia, by welding its subservi- 
ent citizens into one gigantic machine of 
aggression, has given a new reading to 
the Gospel: ‘Blessed are the meek, for 
they shall inherit the earth.” 

Nietzsche, who, though he strove to up- 
set the old Hebrew values, saw clearly 


through the real Prussian peril, defined 


Chosen Peo ples 87 


such a State as that “in which the slow 
suicide of all is called Life,” and “a wel- 
come service unto all preachers of death” 
—a cold, ill-smelling, monstrous idol. 
Nor is this the only affinity between 
Prussia and Japan. ‘We are,” boasts 
a Japanese writer, “a people of the pres- 
ent and the Tangible, of the Broad Day- 
light and the Plainly Visible.” 

But Germany was not always thus. 
“High deeds, O Germans, are to come 
from you,’ wrote Wordsworth in his 
“Sonnets dedicated to Liberty.” And it 
throws light upon the nature of Missions 
to recall that when she lay at the feet of 
Napoleon after Jena, the mission pro- 
claimed for her by Fichte was one of peace 
and righteousness—to penetrate the life 


of humanity by her religion—and he de- 


88 Chosen Peoples 


nounced the dreams of universal monarchy 
which would destroy national individual- 
ity. Calling on his people as “ the con- 
secrated and inspired ones of a Divine 
world-plan,” “To you,” he says, “out of 
all other modern nations the germs of hu- 
man perfection are especially committed. 
It is yours to found an empire of mind 
and reason—to destroy the dominion of 
rude physical power as the ruler of the 
world.” And throwing this mission back- 
wards, he sees in what the outer world calls 
the invasion of the Roman Empire by the 
Goths and Huns the proof that the Ger- 
mans have always stemmed the tide of 
tyrant domination. But Fichte belonged 
to the generation of Kant and Beethoven. 
Hegel, coming a little later, though as 


non-nationalist as Goethe, and a welcomer 


Chosen Peoples 89 


of the Napoleonic invasion, yet prophe- 
sied that if the Germans were once forced 
to cast off their inertia, they, “by preserv- 
ing in their contact with outward things 
the intensity of their inner life, will per- 
chance surpass their teachers’: and in 
curiously prophetic language he called for 
a hero “to realize by blood and iron the 
political regeneration of Germany.” 

If Treitschke, too, believed in force, he 
had a high moral ideal for his nation. 
The other nations are feeble and decadent. 
Germany is to hold the sceptre of the na- 
tions, so as to ensure the peace of the 
world. It is only in Bernhardi that we 
find war in itself glorified as the stimulus 
of nations. Even this ideal has a per- 
verted nobility; as Pol Arcas, a modern 
Greek writer, says: “If the devil knew 


90 Chosen Peoples 


he had horns the cherubim would offer him 
their place.” And though it was only in 
the swelled head of the conqueror that the 
brutal philosophy of the Will-to-Power 
germinated, it was not so much the “blood 
and iron” of Junkerdom that perverted 
Prussia—Junkerdom still lives simply— 
as the gross industrial prosperity that fol- 
lowed on the victory of 1870. A modern 
German author describes his countrymen 
—it is true he has turned Mohammedan, 
probably out of disgust—as tragically de- 
generated and turned into a gold-greedy, 
pleasure-seeking, title-hungry pack. This 
industrial transformation of the nobler 
soul of Germany is by Verhaeren—attack- 
ing Judaism from another angle—as- 
cribed to its Jews, so it is comforting to 


remember that when England started the 


Chosen Peoples 91 


East India Company there was scarcely 
a Jew in England. No, Germany is 
clearly where England was in the seven- 
teenth century, and in Prussia England 
meets her past face to face. Her past, 
but infinitely more conscious and conse- 
quent than her “Rule, Britannia” period, 
with a ruthless logic that does not shrink 
from any conclusions. While England’s 
right hand hardly knew what her left was 
doing, Germany’s right hand is drawing 
up a philosophic justification of her sin- 
ister activities. There is in Henry 
James’s posthumous novel—“The Sense 
of the Past”’—a young man who gets 
locked up in the Past and cannot get back 
to his own era. ‘This is the fate that now 
menaces civilization. Nor is the civili- 


zation that followed the struggle for 


92 : Chosen Peoples 
America by the scramble for Africa en- 


tirely blameless. Germany, federated 
too late for the first mélée and smarting 
under centuries of humiliation—did not 
Louis XIV insolently seize Strassburg? 
—is avenging on our century the sins of 
the seventeenth. 

So far from Germanism being synony- 
mous with Judaism, its analogies are to be 
sought within the five maritime countries 
which preceded Germany, albeit less effi- 
ciently, in the path of militarism. It is the 
same alliance as prevailed everywhere be- 
tween the traders and the armies and 
navies, and the Kaiser’s crime consists 
mainly in turning back the movement of 
the world which through the Hague Con- 
ferences was approaching brotherhood, or 


at least a mitigation of the horrors of war. 


Chosen Peoples 93 


His blasphemies are no less archaic. Tle 
repeats Oliver Cromwell, but with less 
simplicity, while his artistic aspiration 
complicates the Puritan with the Cava- 
lier. “From childhood,” he is quoted as 
saying, “I have been under the influence 
of five men—Alexander, Julius Cesar, 
Theodoric II, Frederick the Great, and 
Napoleon.” No great man moulds him- 
self thus like others. It is but a theatrical 
greatness. But anyhow none of these 
names are Jewish, and not thus were “‘the 
Kings of Jerusalem” even “six thousand 
years ago.” Our kings had the dull duty 
of copying out and studying the Torah, 
and the Rabbis reminded monarchy that 
the Torah demands forty-eight qualifica- 
tions, whereas royalty only thirty, and that 


the crown of a good name is the best of all. 


94 Chosen Peoples 


Compare the German National Anthem 
“Heil dir im Siegeskranz” with the noble 
prayer for the Jewish King in the seventy- 
second psalm, if you wish to understand 
the difference between Judaism and Ger- 
manism. ‘This King, too, is to conquer his 
enemies, but he is also to redeem the needy 
from oppression and violence, “and pre- 


cious will their blood be in his sight.” 


VII 


I F I were asked to sum up in a word 

the essential difference between Juda- 
ism and Germanism, it would be the word 
“Recessional.” While the prophets and 
historians of Germany monotonously 
glorify their nation, the Jewish writers as 
monotonously rebuke theirs. “You only 
have I known among all the families of 
the earth,” says the message through 
Amos. “Therefore I will visit upon you 
all your iniquities.” The Bible, as I have 
said before, is an anti-Semitic book. “Is- 
rael is the villain, not the hero, of his own 
story.” Alone among epics, it is out for 


truth, not high heroics. To flout the 
95 


96 Chosen Peoples 


Pharisees was not reserved for Jesus. 
“Behold, ye fast for strife and conten- 
tion,” said Isaiah, ‘‘and to smite with the 
fist of wickedness.” While some German 
writers, not content with the great men 
Germany has so abundantly produced, 
vaunt that all others, from Jesus to Dante, 
from Montaigne to Michael Angelo, are of 
Teuton blood, Jewish literature unflinch- 
ingly exposes the flaws even of a Moses 
and a David. It is this passion for verac- 
ity unknown among other peoples—is 
even Washington’s story told without 
gloss’—that gives false colour to the leg- 
end of Israel’s ancient savagery. ‘The 
title of a nation to its territory,” says 
Seeley, “is generally to be sought in primi- 
tive times and would be found, if we could 


recover it, to rest upon violence and mas- 


Chosen Peoples 97 


sacre.’ The dispossession of the Red In- 
dian by America, of the Maori by New 
Zealand, is almost within living memory. 
But in national legends this universal 


process is sophisticated. 


Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, 


the Aineid told the all-invading Roman, 
putting of course the contemporary ideal 
backwards—as all missons are put—and 


into the prophetic mouth of Jove:— 


Hae tibi erunt artis, pacisque imponere morem, 
Parcere subjectis et debelare superbos. 


It was for similarly exalted purposes that 
Israel was to occupy Palestine, yet with 
what unique denigration the Bible turns 
upon him: “Not for thy righteousness or 


for the uprightness of thy heart dost thou 


98 Chosen Peoples 


go to possess this land; but for the wicked- 
ness of these nations the Lord thy God 
doth drive them out from before thee.” 

In English literature this note of “Re- 
cessional” was sounded long before Kip- 
ling. Milton, though he claimed that 
“God’s manner” was to reveal himself 
“first to His Englishmen,” added that 
they “mark not the methods of His coun- 
sel and are unworthy.” 

“Is India free,’ wrote Cowper, “or do 
we grind her still?” “Secure from actual 
warfare,” sang Coleridge, “we have loved 
to swell the war-whoop.” For Words- 
worth England was simply the least evil 
of the nations. And Mr. Chesterton has 
just written a “History of England” in 
the very spirit of a Micah flagellating the 


classes ‘‘who loved fields and seized them.” 


Chosen Peoples 99 


But if in Germany a voice of criticism 
breaks the chorus of self-adoration, it is 
usually from a Jew like Maximilian Har- 
den, for Jews, as Ambassador Gerard 
testifies, represent almost the only real 
“culture in Germany. Ihave been at pains 
to examine the literature of the German 
Synagogue, which if Germanism were 
Judiasm, ought to show a double dose of 
original sin. But so far from finding any 
swagger of a Chosen People, whether 
Jewish or German, I find in its most popu- 
lar work—Lazarus’s “Soziale Ethik im 
Judentum’’—published as late as Novem- 
ber, 1913, by the League of German Jews 
—a grave indictment of militarism. For 
the venerable philosopher, while justly ex- 
plaining the glamour of the army by its 
subordination of the individual to the com- 


100 Chosen Peoples 


munal weal, yet pointed out emphatically 
that what unites individuals separates 
nations. “The work of justice shall be 
peace,” he quotes from Isaiah. I am far 
from supposing that the old Germany of 
Goethe and Schiller and Lessing is not 
still latent—indeed, we know that one 
Professor suggested at a recent Nietzsche 
anniversary that the Germans should try 
to rise not to Supermen but to Men, and 
that another now lies in prison for explain- 
ing in his “Biologie des Krieges”’ that the 
real objection to war is simply that it com- 
pels men to act unlike men. So that, 
when moreover we remember that the no- 
blest and most practical treatise on ‘“Per- 
petual Peace” came from that other Ger- 
man professor, Kant, the hope is-not alto- 


gether ausgechlossen that in the internal 


Chosen Peoples 101 


convulsion that must follow the war, there 
may be an upheaval of that finer German- 
ism of which we should be only too proud 


to say that it 7s Judaism. 


VItl 


UT meantime we are waiting, and 

the soul “waiteth for the Lord more 

than watchmen look for the morning, yea, 
more than watchmen for the morning.” 
Again, as in earlier periods of history, the 
world lies in darkness, listening to the 
silence of God—a silence that can be felt. 
“Watchmen, what of the night?’ Such 

a blackness fell upon the ancient Jews 
when Hadrian passed the plough over 
Mount Zion. But, turning from empty 
apocalyptic visions, they drew in on them- 
selves and created an inner Jerusalem, 
which has solaced and safeguarded them 


ever since. Such a blackness fell on the 
102 


Chosen Peoples 103 
ancient Christians when the Huns invaded 
Rome, and the young Christian world, 
robbed of its millennial hopes, began to 
wonder if perchance this was not the venge- 
ance of the discarded gods. But drawing 
in on themselves, they learned from St. 
Augustine to create an inner “City of 
God.” How shall humanity meet this 
blackest crisis of all? What new “City 
of God” can it build on the tragic wreck- 
age of a thousand years of civilization? 
Has Israel no contribution to offer here 
but the old quarrel with Christianity? 
But that quarrel shrinks into comparative 
concord beside the common peril from the 
resurrected gods of paganism, from Thor 
and Odin and Priapus. And it was 
always an exaggerated quarrel—half 


misunderstanding, like most quarrels. 


104 Chosen Peoples 


Neither St. Augustine nor St. Anselm 
believed God was other than One. Jesus 
but applied to himself distributively—as 
logicians say—those conceptions of divine 
sonship and suffering service which were 
already assets of Judaism, and but for the 
theology of atonement woven by Paul un- 
der Greek influences, either of them might 
have carried Judaism forward on that 
path of universalism which its essential 
genius demands, and which even without 
them it only just missed. Is it not humili- 
ating that Islam, whose Koran expressly 
recalls its obligation to our prophets, 
should have beaten them in the work of 
universalization? Maimonides acknowl- 
edged the good work done by Jesus and 
Mohammed in propagating the Bible. 
But if the universalism they achieved held 


Chosen Peoples 105 


faulty elements, is that any reason why the 
purer truth should shrink from universali- 
zation? Has Judaism less future than 
Buddhism—that religion of negation and 
monkery—whose sacred classics enjoin 
the Bhiksu to camp in and contemplate a 
cemetery? Has it less inspiration and 
optimism than that apocalyptic vision of 
the ultimate victory of Good which con- 
soles the disciples of Zoroaster? If there 
is anything now discredited in its ancient 
Scriptures, the Synagogue can, as of yore, 
relegate it to the Apocrypha, even as it 
can enrich the canon with later expres- 
sions of the Hebrew genius. Its one 
possible rival, Islam, is, as Kuenen main- 
tains, as sterile for the future as Bud- 
dhism, too irretrievably narrowed to the 


Arab mentality. But why, despite his 


106 Chosen Peoples 


magnificent tribute to Judaism, does this 
unfettered thinker imagine that the last 
word is with Christianity? FEucken, too, 
would call the future Christian, though he 
rejects the Incarnation and regards the 
Atonement as injurious to religion, and 
the doctrine of the Trinity as a stumbling- 
block rather than a help. Abraham Lin- 
coln being only a plain man, was not able 
to juggle with himself like a German theo- 
logian, and with the simplicity of great- 
ness he confessed: “I have never united 
myself to any Church, because I have 
found difficulty in giving my assent, with- 
out mental reservation, to the long, com- 
plicated statements of the Christian doc- 
trine which characterize their Articles of 
Belief and Confessions of Faith.” “When 


any church,” he added, “will inscribe over 


Chosen Peoples 107 


its altar, as its sole qualification for mem- 
bership, . . . “Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy might, and thy 
neighbour as thyself,’ that church will I 
join with all my heart and with all my 
soul.” 7 

Can one read this and not wonder what 
Judaism has been about that Lincoln did 
not even know there was such a church? 
But call the coming religious reconstruc- 
tion what you will, what do names matter 
when all humanity is crucified, what does 
anything matter but to save it from mean- 
ingless frictions and massacres? “Would 
that My people forgot Me and kept My 
commandments,” says the Jerusalem Tal- 
mud. Too long has Israel been silent. 


“Who is blind,” says the prophet, “but 


108 Chosen Peoples 


My servant, or deaf as My messenger?” 
He is not deaf to-day, he is only dumb. 
But the voice of Jerusalem must be heard 
again when the new world-order is shap- 
ing. The Chosen People must choose. 
To be or not to be. “The religion or 
the Jews is indeed a light,” said Coleridge 
in his “Table Talk,” “but it is as the light 
of the glow-worm which gives no heat and 
illumines nothing but itself.” Why let 
a sun sink into a glow-worm? And even 
a glow-worm should turn. It does not 


that prudent maxim of the 





even pay 
Babylonian Talmud, Dina dimalchutha 
dina (“In Rome do as the Romans’). 
Despite every effort of Jews as individual 
citizens the world still tends to see them 
as Crabbe saw them a century ago in his 


“Borough” :— 


Chosen Peoples 109 


Nor war nor wisdom yields our Jews delight, 
They will not study and they dare not fight. 
It is because they fight under no banner 
of their own. But the time has come 
when they must fight as Jews—fight that 
“mental fight” from which that greater 
English poet, Blake, declared he would 
not cease till he had “built Jerusalem in 
England’s green and pleasant land.” To 
build Jerusalem in every land—even in 
Palestine—that is the Jewish mission. 
As Nina Salaman sings—and I am glad 
to end with the words of a daughter of the 
lofty-souled scholar in whose honour this 
lecture is given— 

Wherefore else our age-long life, our wandering 

landless, 
Every land our home for ill or good? 

Ours it was long since to join the hands of na- 


tions 


Through the link of our own brotherhood. 





AFTERWORD 


(Nays 










Ny) 
i ey) 
a y 
hie hk : 
DEERE AYES 
We My Rey 
ARO 






AFTERWORD 


Dr. IsrarL ABRAHAMS, Reader in Tal- 
mudic and Rabbinic Literature in the 
University of Cambridge, in seconding the 
vote of thanks to the speakers, moved by 
the President of the Jewish Historical 
Society (Sir Lionel Abrahams, K.C.B.), 
said that the Chairman had already paid 
a tribute to the memory of Arthur Davis. 
But a twice-told tale was not stale in 
repetition when the tale was told of such 
aman. He was a real scholar; not only 
in the general sense of one who loved great 
books, but also in the special sense that he 
possessed the technical knowledge of an 


expert. His “Hebrew Accents” reveals 
113 


114 Chosen Peoples 
Arthur Davis in these two aspects. It 


shows mastery of an intricate subject, a 
subject not likely to attract the mere 
dilettante. But it also reveals his interest 
in the Bible as literature. He appre- 
ciated both the music of words and the 
melody of ideas. When the work ap- 
peared, a foreign scholar asked: “Who 
was his teacher?’ ‘The answer was: him- 
self. ‘There is a rather silly proverb that 
the self-taught man has a fool for his 
master. Certainly Arthur Davis had no 
fool for his pupil. And though he had 
no teacher, he had what is better, a fine 
capacity for comradeship in studies. 


? 


“Acquire for thyself a companion,” said 
the ancient Rabbi. There is no friend- 
ship equal to that which is made over the 


common study of books. At the Talmud 


Chosen Peoples 115 


meetings held at the house of Arthur 
Davis were founded lifelong intimacies. 
Unpretentious in their aim, there was in 
these gatherings a harmony of charm and 
earnestness; pervading them was the true 
“Joy of service.” Above all he loved the 
liturgy. Here the self-taught man must 


excel. Homer said :— 


Dear to gods and men is sacred song. 

Self-taught I sing: by Heaven and Heaven 
alone 

The genuine seeds of poesy are sown. 


And, as the expression of his inmost self, 
he gave us the best edition of the Festival 
Prayers in any language: better than 
Sachs—than which praise can go no 
higher. This Prayer Book is his true 
memorial, unless there be a truer still. 


Perhaps his feeling that he might after 


116 Chosen Peoples 


all have lost something because he had no 
teacher made him so wonderful a teacher 
of his own daughters. In their continu- 
ance of his work his personality endures. 
At the end of his book on Accents he 
quoted, in Hebrew, a sentence from Jere- 
miah, with a clever play on the double 
meaning of the word which signifies at 
once “accent” and “taste.” Thinking of 
his record, and how his beautiful spirit 
animates those near and dear to him, we 
may indeed apply to him this same text: 
“His taste remaineth in him and his fra- 


grance is not changed.” 


THE END 


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